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The Information Technology Professionals Association of America (ITPAA), a high-tech advocacy group based in Wilmington, Delaware has handed out its first Weasel Award of 2006 to Senate hopeful Harris Miller (Democrat) of Virginia. The organization, representing over 1,200 professionals nationally, presents the award to business and political leaders that it believes betrays the trust of the American people and threatens America’s standing in the technology sector.

Editor's Note: We received this information today from a source within India.

Anonymous writes:
For short term projects TCS has been bringing programmers via the B1 visa, especially in the SAP, I2 and Oracle related projects. The company has been falsely declaring to the INS that they are brought for "business development", "due diligence study" etc. etc. In reality, all of them do programmming / configuration/ testing and the clients are billed. No one can work and earn money when they come to the USA with a B1 visa. This is a gross violation of US Immigration law. For instance, TCS has brought in people illegally to work on the following projects in the USA :GE, Siemens (Florida), British Petroleum (Chicago), Applied Materials (Santa Clara), Alcova (Pittsburgh), Delphi (Detroit)..and surely many more... These illegal activities should be first probed and the US consulates in India should ban issue of visas to comapnies like TCS who have been doing illegal activities for the last over 25 years with impunity. Will your organization please take up this noble cause and exp!
ose the true color of Tatas? Please do not divulge my name or ID as that would result in my physical elimination. It will result in a threat to my life.Hope I can take you to confidence.
It is sad that people are not comiing forward in large numbers to expose all the illegal activities of TCS and create awareness! TCS has already used its money/muscle power to "kill" all the links related to the recent case / comments in Indian newspapers! Are you aware of that?

We get emails like this all the time in our inbox:

Respected Sirs,

We are an young IT startup in India, backed with strong certified and experienced professionals. We need suggestions and technical know how on how we can undertake and successfully complete offshore projects in scheduled manner.

expecting your kind support

regards
S...J...
Chief executive

How many business rules does this break?

1. Know your market. Obviously they don't know we aren't exactly supportive of offshoring to India.
2. Don't spam.
3. Don't assume your clients are men. It's insulting in the Modern Age.
4. Don't ask for "suggestions and technical know how" unless you are willing to pay for it. Free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it.
5. Don't use bad grammar or misspellings. Unless you are ee Cummings, never begin a sentence in lowercase.

This is a company Corporate America would do business with?

Posted by Sean:

Hi, I appreciate your efforts in maintaining a site to fight the cause of IT professionals in america.

I noticed the following story in the media where Indian offshore company TCS is sued by one of its employees because he was forced to give the tax refunds to TCS.

Following are some links i found in Indian media. I have attached the Indian media links because they contain around 100 reader comments, most of which agree with the allegations in the law-suit.

"The Chair/CEO of Pacific Plastics & Engineering in Soquel, California claims it can't find qualified American employees and needs access to foreign NIV workers to remain competitive... So, the answer is another push to increase the NIV cap...

If you believe that you can fill one of the positions noted below, please contact the employers and NAM (and perhaps tell the readers at ITPAA what you said and how your application was treated.

-- The Info_Tech_Guy


"

"President Bush American Competitiveness For Future Has Present Flaw
Sci/Tech
Author: Steve Sabludowsky | 2/4/2006

For his Saturday radio address, President Bush on Saturday repeated his emphasis for his American Competitiveness Initiative which he introduced during his recent State of the Union Speech.
"

In order to conduct business in China, Google has decided to allow Chinese governmental control and censorship of its search engines within China - even as it fights a US governmental request for a weeks worth of search terms. Story here. Commentary here, here and here. Google has already established itself as one of the nation's largest employer of non-immigrant visa holders and premier offshoring center. While Google seems quite comfortable shipping our jobs to China, it apparently does mind offshoring our values of Truth, Freedom and Social Justice.

We avoided using Adsense ads from the very beginning because we believed it was unethical to advertise offshoring agencies, outsourcing consultancies and H-1b lawyers - the most likely ads our site would have generated under Adsense. Later it turned out that Google was a large part of the problem of offshoring and non-immigrant visa abuse. Now Google is allowing the occupiers of Tibet and an American Economic competitor to dictate its business in China.

Here's a recent article at Dean's World (link) supporting the candidacy of Bob Dodge. Be sure to check out the comments for a discussion on globalization.

Prof. Matloff writes:

At my suggestion, the author did a check of the HP jobs Web page, and then reported the following for Hewlett-Packard:

A search for engineer openings Wednesday found 335 jobs posted for engineers, of which 35, or 10 percent, were in the Bay Area; 41 percent were in the United States; and 59 percent were available outside the United States. The primary foreign destinations were India, China and Singapore, according to a cursory survey of the postings. (Read More)

Prof. Matloff writes:

I've been getting a ton of e-mail from readers of this e-newsletter regarding an article on H-1B in the December 13 issue of the Arizona Republic, available at (link).

The article is for the most part balanced and accurate, but readers are upset that the reporter makes one major error, in which she says:

* [H-1Bs] are admitted on the basis of their professional education, skills * or experience, and employers are required to seek U.S. workers first and * attest that they have not laid off a similarly qualified U.S. worker. * For immigrants, an H-1B is often a prelude to applying for status as a * legal permanent resident.

This is incorrect. Employers do NOT have to attest that they have recruited American workers qualified for the job and they have not laid off any. (Read More)

Just a note that Raven from Raven Web Hosting just finished upgrading the security on our site. In case you are wondering, we are regularly attacked - but the moat is deep and the walls are high thanks to Raven.

Also, we wouldn't be here without the expertise of Digital Labs, LLC. They've been our help desk and web host - for free. Be sure to stop by and check out their cool software.

"
Senate Bill Will Take Even More Jobs From Americans

Diane Alden
Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005

Both political parties are bought and paid for by one economic or corporate interest or another. In the world of the Beltway Iron Triangle, the primary directive is to accumulate as much money for re-election as possible while making points with power brokers and corporate lobbying groups. What may be at stake for the professional politician and eternal inhabitant of the Beltway is a lucrative position in a post-government life, perhaps in the financial, lobbying or corporate world. It is all about connections, after all.

In Washington, cronyism is rampant, and in some cases, so is nepotism. It is less and less unusual for those on the political or policy-making food chain to connect relatives and friends or colleagues into positions of power and influence. Influence-peddling in the Beltway is honed to a fine art (Read More).
"

Here's a contribution from ITPAA member and founder of American Champions, Joe Valley - Come Back To India (Link).

"Hi everyone, got this disturbing information from a very reliable source.

Word on the street is that there is a new proposal in the Senate to create an additional 60,000 H-1B visas per year for the next 5 years (at least.)

The proposal is being sold as a revenue enhancement as the new visas would come with an additional $500 fee, raising $30 million. The business community is selflessly agreeing to pay higher taxes, in exchange for getting more visas. (<---sarcasm)

The actual proposal on the table is authored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), but Kennedy supports it. As most of you know, Sen. Kennedy is a strong proponent of raising the cap.

If this is introduced, it will probably show up in the Budget Bill. If it gets in there, it will be hard to get it out.

When I get more details, I will blog them on DisplacedTechies.

I would encourage everyone in MA to contact Senators Kennedy and Kerry, and PA folks should also contact Sen. Arlen Specter. "

Copyright 2005 by Rabindra P. Kar.
Permission is hereby given to reproduce this article electronically or in print, without charge, on condition that: (a) The article is reproduced in unedited form. (b) The author is acknowledged.
=============================================================================
In recent years, there has been a vigorous, sometimes acrimonious, debate about whether offshoring (also referred to as “outsourcing�) is positive or negative for the United States, and the other developed Western economies. Underlying this debate is an unspoken assumption – that offshoring has been very good for the developing countries where the jobs have moved. India is widely regarded as the prime beneficiary of this phenomenon. Consequently, it seems like a rhetorical question to ask whether offshoring is good for India. (Read More)

Curious why the ITPAA, Programmer's Guild, and Hire America are small while industry-supported groups like the ITAA and Compete America are large? Rob at Zazona.com, a long time activist in the fight against labor dumping and offshoring, gives solid reasons why our struggle is a fragmented, uphill one.

The truth hurts but here it is anyway.

Rob writes:

1 - There is very little public support for an organization that tries to fight H-1B and/or outsourcing. Most people are either unaware that these are problems, or think that these things are a good thing for America. The U.S. populace has not reached a consensus on this issue. I haven't even seen a consensus that we need to organize, much less a common agreement about what issues should be addressed.

(Read More)

Well it looks like CompeteAmerica - a pro-outsourcing, labor dumping group just got competition from CompeteAmerica.(link)

Hat-tip: Bob Johnson

"The Free Trade Farce

Big business waves the globalization flag while draped in a protective mantle of U.S. tax and immigration laws favoring offshoring. Let’s stop the name-calling and face the facts.

By Michael Milutis

The 80-year-old bra tariff in the United States illustrates not just the unequal burden still facing U.S. bra consumers but, more saliently, the absurdity of those who invoke “free trade� when confronting offshore outsourcing critics. Virtually no bras are manufactured here anymore. The tariff hasn’t protected U.S. jobs—yet it’s still in place and hovers at 17 percent. In fact, every mass-market product has a tariff. (Read More)
"

Rabindra Kar "The 11 "rules" below are from Bill Gates' address to the students of Mt. Whitney High School in Visalia, CA.

Each rule is followed by what (in my opinion) the appropriate response should be, from the tech workers of this country!

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

It'll get even more unfair if Bill and his fellow American CEO's have their way.
They will giove themselves fabulous compensation, lobby the government
for lower taxes, and tell their US employees that their company can't compete
without sending their jobs to lower-paid overseas counterparts. (Read More)
"

Just a note that I have published an article about Harris Miller's "worry" over the lack of interest in CS degrees at Dean's World that can be seen via this link.

Be sure to view the comments section.

Here is a link to an article that I wrote when I was unemployed over 2 years ago. Much of what I learned remains relevant today.

If you know someone who recently lost his job, pass it along.

Staying Alive - How to survive unemployment in today’s economy

Submitted by Dave L:

American Democracy, Not Dead Yet, But Quite Sick

On the heals of the CAFTA vote, I guess I’m getting quite pessimistic about the state of democracy in this country. In fact, I could not honestly say that I live in a society that enjoys representative government anymore. I’m not sure when we lost that, but I’m pretty certain that it’s gone. The only remaining question is, how do we get it back, or can we? (Read More)

Hire America has an interesting email exchange (link) with Catharine Mann - a lobbyist who champions the "offshoring creates jobs" myth - and Prof. Norm Matloff, who shoots the myth apart.

Good catch, Marc!

Just a note that we will be going through our articles over the next week or two to better categorize the... 1800 or so articles we have in our archives.

We've also had to ditch the cutesy icons.

If you do not see a topic that you believe should be covered, please let us know.

Sometimes I wonder if fighting the offshoring of jobs abroad is worth it when:

1. I wait for a total of 90 minutes over three days to upgrade my cell phone plan at the local Verizon Wireless store. I end up leaving the store after being refused service for carrying Spike with me into the store on a 95 degree day.

2. A local caterer sends stale bread to a funeral service that is too hard for elderly visitors to eat. The owner refuses to reimburse the family for the cost of the sandwiches. I challenge the credit card payment - and lose.

(Read More)

From Prof. Norm Matloff's Newsletter.
Professor Matloff writes:

The ITAA recently released a study on diversity in IT. My response, in http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/ITAASameOld.txt, was

This is the same tactic the ITAA took in 1998 as an argument to increase the H-1B cap: "If only we had more women and minorities in IT, we wouldn't need H-1Bs." Total smokescreen. What it is failing to say is that large numbers of qualified people, regardless of race or gender, cannot get work in the field. (Read More)