If this doesn't get your blood boiling then you're dead. The Obama administration is spending $36 million dollars to train foreign workers in foreign countries for skills needed to offshore outsource your job. I'm not making this up. $36 million dollars to educate foreign workers, when the U.S. unemployment rate is at crisis levels. Our government is paying for education, classes and training so foreigners can get the skills needed to do American jobs.
Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.
Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.
Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.
USAID is contributing about $10 million to the effort, while its private partners are investing roughly $26 million.
"To help fill workforce gaps in BPO and IT, USAID is teaming up with leading BPO and IT/English language training companies to establish professional IT and English skills development training centers," the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, said in a statement posted Friday on its Web site.
"Courses in Business Process Outsourcing, Enterprise Java, and English Language Skills will be offered at no charge to over 3,000 under- and unemployed students who will then participate in on-the-job training schemes with private firms," the embassy said.
USAID is also partnering with Sri Lankan companies in other industries, including construction and garment manufacturing, to help create 10,000 new jobs in the country, which is still recovering from a 30-year civil war that ended in 2009.
But it's the outsourcing program that's sure to draw the most fire from critics. While Obama acknowledged that occupations such as garment making don't add much value to the U.S. economy, he argued relentlessly during his presidential run that lawmakers needed to do more to keep hi-tech jobs in IT, biological sciences, and green energy in the country.
The fact they must train foreigners also shows offshore outsourcing has nothing to do about skills and everything to do with slave wages. There are plenty of Americans, right now, losing homes, who cannot make rent, who know how to program in Java! Add in the number of Americans who would love to be educated and trained in I.T. and software development, the numbers are assuredly above 500,000.
Gets Better! Our tax dollars are going to Armenia to train people, this is training, workers in Java EE/I.T. to take American jobs.
People, I am here to tell you, I can go out and find 100 U.S. workers who have these skills who are desperate and broke, in half an hour. Add free education and training into the mix, the line to apply would be out the door.
On a different note, all attorneys reading this, your job is being offsore outsourced. Glad you invested in yourself and racked up 6 figure law school debt?
This isn't rocket science to understand why the U.S. middle class is being wiped out, why the unemployment rate is staying so high. Corporations, in partnership with our government are offshore outsourcing every job that isn't nailed down.
Of course, and the beat goes on
I was just pointing this out to someone this morning, how one must understand all the connections.
Of course, this has been going all since the Carter Administration at least, and through all the following ones.
In the early '00s of the Bush Administration, the Department of Commerce spent taxpayer dollars to fund various local Chamber of Commerce seminars around the country to explain the most efficient and easiest manner in which to offshore local corporations' jobs.
Of course, the present secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke, while governore of Washington, offshored state jobs in at least 49 out of 51 state agencies. Figures he'd be Obama's second pick for the job, as his first pick was equally bad and pro-offshoring, simply a Republican swine!
Now Secretary Locke can continue aiding and abetting offshoring by signing all those waivers to the stimulus.
why yes
That really, really got my blood boiling. Thanks for that.
Tax incentives to outsource aren't enough. No, the taxpayer has to SUBSIDIZE the outsourcing of his own job.
I can't even believe what's happening in this country. Everything is upside-down and backwards. Thieves and criminals are rewarded while the virtuous are punished.
Seriously though, where is the outrage? People should be furious about this. People should be rioting in the streets. I tell everyone I know about what's going on and all I am confronted with is apathy.
As a lawyer, I can tell you firsthand that the job prospects are abysmal. I was lucky to get a (non-lawyer) job but many of my classmates and lawyer friends have no job to speak of or any hope of getting one. It's brutal out there, and to see this administration selling us all out for pennies on the dollar just gets me into a psychopathic rage.
Why do we tolerate the bullshit? Why does everyone sit back and take it up the ass?
hit the share buttons
It sure outraged me and I think most Americans will find this completely outrageous if they are aware of it.
So, spread it around. The article is a technical rag, so as you can imagine, not that many people are going to find out about this unless we spread it.
Yeh, but what's the end game?
For some reason triggered today reading Economic Populist, I'll quit lurking. I agree there's poor action on Capitol Hill, executing not only unworkable policy but generally just mucking with ongoing damage. Our outrage should be the outrage all policy makers feel - and use it to end dilution and destruction. Instead arguments boil over political pandering or paid-off compromise or damn abstract ideologies we see are 'magic' and inadequate game theory, not to mention the impotent trick of balanced books.
Yet if we had the strongest and most wise leadership, could we create enough jobs? A full and astounding economic recovery may not significantly change today's horrible ratio of 6 applicants for every job opening. No ingenious offer to fix this is on the table. If we reigned in corporate adventurism, if we corralled every unused nickel from wastrel billionaires, and if we suddenly all cooperated together as if WWII, there's no one offering such a vision and it's unlikely anyone will deliver a workable 'industrial policy' already beyond the scope of organizations as we know them to implement.
It's harder each day for me to get angry, not that I'm not. The challenge is so great that I no longer expect solutions from personalities or their speeches. We have too slowly reacted to exponential growth and exponential demands, do not manage deterioration or extraction, and we fake the rest with silly retail :-) We have few answers to many challenges we've overlooked too long. I don't see broad solutions offered in the current array of argument. I see a long slog created as much by history itself than by fools or brigands.
We must try to reduce agony for millions of us that are neither slackers nor lazy but under-served by society itself. Supplies remain at risk and costs increasingly volatile. Sloppy pilfering and outright aggression steers away effective action.
Ignoring overseas for a moment, there's no one stumping for office and few if any corporate or union leaders offering an adequate reply.
If we returned every overseas job, we need more jobs than we can create. There are more workers than we can employ. If we had a Capitol Hill on every hill to give us power and a Wall Street in every mall to keep us liquid, we're still in for a slog. It will take true effort, but I think we're going to have to solve these issues as much nearby as in policy centers. I can't get juiced waiting for ideal leadership.
Almost embarrassed to seem like a 'localist', but I'm thinking all of us better get busy learning what solvent society is and assure we are creating it nearby. Building towards something we can feel and touch and repair in every way we can, maybe the lesson these days is to never again rely on those that are remote and incapable.
I have learned to take most
I have learned to take most blog articles with a grain of salt, but if this one is even half accurate, we must find a way to force the MSM to make it VERY public.
Not only are we depriving American workers of the much needed chance for employment, we are encouraging and expediting this outrage with our own money - money that is sorely needed right here at home.
Note to Obama - charity, in the form of foreign aid, begins at home. In other words, we should be sure that all Americans have the basic necessities before we start sending more money overseas.
Anybody but Americans
We wrote on this site how Obama has the queen of offshore outsourcing, Diana Farrell on his economic team. We noted repeatedly he was putting into place, those affiliated with foreign offshore outsourcing interests.
Now the results are clearly home to roost. This is the ultimate, using U.S. taxpayer dollars to give skills to foreigners in order to increase offshore outsourcing of U.S. jobs.
To me, it's pretty much treasonous. Those are strong words but I'm sorry, taking our money to train foreigners, to give them skills in order to take our jobs is just inexcusable.
Politics as usual
I fear for our government. Too much Bureaucracy (with a capitol B). I don't think our system as it is run now by the politicians will ever change anything. I think the fix is in. No matter who is in "power", no matter what they say, this mess will not go away unless BIG changes occur.All the evil that we as individuals see and recognize is ingrained into our government,(AND we only see the tip of the NON_MELTING iceberg), for all kinds of reasons:Placate this faction, Shut these guys up- give them what they want so they will go away, You scratch my back and I will scratch yours.This stuff has been going on for so long, no one even remembers why it was done in the first place.
The first thing we need to do, is to stop personalizing our governmental problems. Obama is no more responsible for this problem than George Bush or Jimmy Carter was.
IT'S THE SYSTEM, DUMMY. You get it now? There are too many layers of truth and lies to ever find the one that's real. The new politicians every election cycle can make a few changes, but nothing that takes, nothing that really makes a difference.
Someone needs to come up with a solution. Let's start with this:
Regarding politicians: ALL THEM DOGS GOT FLEAS
Second, We need STATESMEN in power and not POLITICIANS.
we're too broke to buy our government back
and frankly the corruption price is pretty low. But the U.S. labor force, middle class simply doesn't have organized slush funds (called campaign contributions and perhaps a $5 million salary position for family members or after someone leave government), to buy our government back.
We have foreign interests, often through some domestic lobbying organization, buying our government. Corporations run the show.
So, it doesn't matter which politician is in place, the corruption outweighs the few who are there out of principle, trying to do their job of representing the American people.
You have to dig deep into campaign contributions to figure out who is the most bought and paid for.
A good bet is to vote for the person who has no campaign funds.
President Obama Traitor
Unbelievable. Thanks for posting this. The Obama administration is further undermining American workers by doing this. So many IT layoffs here in the U.S. yet our taxpayer dollars are being spent to train foreigners to which our jobs will be outsourced. Obama is betraying American workers.
Why not use that money to train laid off Information Technology workers here in America?
These articles should be posted in every in every U.S. college Computer Science Department and every high school guidance counselors office so that those Americans considering Computer Science will see that their own government and President Obama are betraying them.
It is sickening that President Obama is inflicting more misery on American workers.
I would like to see WashTech organize a fax campaign around this issue.
Please contact your Senators and Representative about this. I will.
IT Relocation
I worked in IT Relocation in the early 1990's. After being trained in Taiwan and India, workers came through Canada to the US. We hired no US workers because the training had been done off-shore to the US corporate specifications. This was a bitter pill for me. My husband was part of a massive mid-level computer corporate lay-off in the mid-1980's. Most of us never recovered "1st class" status. Of course it is economical for the corporations to eliminate their expense for training. Here in California one would think the universities could have covered some of it. There is a story here that is ugly and still pushed by the IT sector against the US worker.
training your replacement
There are many stories, to the point it was obviously common practice, where employees first had to train their replacements before being fired.
So, it's more brazen in that the American literally had to train a foreign worker to do their job, sometimes it took months due to the complexity of the skills involved.
So, that right there shows, they are not interested in Americans who have the skills. This is all about technology transfer to India and China. India, especially has made heavy inroads to state and federal government agencies, all with the agenda, including lobbying, to get American jobs.
Does anybody remember the website made for (and by) IT workers..
Does anybody remember the website made for (and by?) IT workers who had gotten their jobs outsourced?
there were many
but because IT workers won't (don't) organize, eventually the person running those sites has to get work and gives up. I wish techies would get it together to organize. There is Techs Unite, affiliated with the AFL-CIO trying to organize techies. Alliance@IBM is another, but unfortunately techies kind of do drive by comments and that's about it.
83% of freelancers have gotten stiffed at least once. That's outrageous.
Thanks
Thanks, but I don't recognize these web sites. Also, I wasn't even thinking in terms of a union. Finally, one has a forum, with next to no participation.
I'm an out of work IT guy, who is out of work, an activist for fixing democracy, and full of ideas for using technology to help fix democracy. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to work on my ideas, so I thought others IT guys might be available.
Oh, the one I was thinking of is noslaves.org
Just saw it off to the side of this web site.
still there
I turned it into a Drupal based site, like this one and left it up to others if they want to use it or not.
While I care about Tech labor issues and still am very active, in terms of my own interests, I'm much more into econ as a whole, so EP is your basic economics blog, although if I see something pretty damn incredible, like this story, I'll write about it here.
noslaves.com is now devoted to all things U.S. tech labor exclusively, but I try to leave it up to others to use.
That's how these things work, the more people use them, the more people read them and then they get picked up on and grow.
For offshore outsourcing job
It's really creative and time tested decision as Obama administration is encouraging offshore outsourcing system.So I would like to give my heartiest thanks to Obama Administration.I would like to involve myself as an offshore outsourcing job....Have a great day.
offshoring
I am aware of the outsourcing that is going on globally these days, however there are holes in your story.
First, outsourcing is done to countries with reliable network connections to the west, I doubt some of the countries you mentioned qualify, for example Armenia.
Second, law cannot be outsourced, BAR certification is needed, which can only be obtained in the United States. Perhaps legal assitance work can be outsourced.