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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rolla Coasta who wrote (9836)	9/23/2000 7:12:06 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Well, as I once quipped it, Americans are racist people who nurse* their racism whereas Europeans are repressed xenophobes...* Get the picture? I somehow disagree with you about that "high-tech immigration" yarn --do you really think that the 250,000+ wetbacks who cross the Rio Grande each year carry their laptops along in a plastic bag? Just as with Europe's North-African illegals, they end up in clandestine sweatshops or as apple-pickers in the country. However, it's true that the US corporate landscape as a whole is much more open and diversified than Europe's --or just any other labor market, for that matter. Yet, it's still highly segregated as the following story shows: RAINBOW ON THE WEB, PART ONE -- by Diana Estigarribia -- After 15 years as a software developer, Trish Millines quit her job at Microsoft. "It became very critical and urgent to do something" about a fundamental problem, she recalls. What she set out to remedy is the severe shortage of minorities in the information industry. As an African-American and a woman, Millines is especially sensitive to the need for diversity in the largely white, male high-tech world. The Seattle resident decided to start in her own city, a key computing hub. In the summer of 1996, along with educator Jill Hull, Millines created the nonprofit Technology Access Foundation. Its mission: to bring up-to-date technology to Seattle's communities of color and teach them the skills to use it. In October of 1997, with Millines as executive director, the Technology Access Foundation launched its first program, the Technical Teens Internship. Over 20 minority high-school students learned how to navigate software programs, design web sites -- even build a computer from scratch. [snip] womenswire.com In the second part of that article we learn that Millines was eventually granted $440,000 by the William Gates Foundation.... Howbeit, such a trivial fairy-tale ending, starring a little black "Sleeping Beauty" who's awoken with a $440,000 smacker would just be unthinkable over here. After all, that's why German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder threw in the idea of welcoming a few thousands technogeeks from India. The hidden truth here is that Germany already has a "dark-skinned" pool of 2,000,000+ Turkish gastarbeiters but the Turks' menial image doesn't fit in with the glittery, pushy mindset of Germany's would-be Silicon Valley.... Contrariwise, India with her Bangalore showpiece has already been coopted by corporate America. Hence European melting-potters' plan: if Europe wants to thrive in that brave new Information Age, it'd better ape the Yanks as best it can. And what does the Yanks' Silicon Valley look like? Jeez, it's crawling with Chinks and Pakis (Hindus, actually). Hell! Let's do the same then -- if the Yanks can squeeze out some value-add out of'em, so can we! Obviously, the very same aping strategy is preventing Europe from capitalizing on its pre-existing pool of immigrant resources --whether Turks in Germany, Moroccans in Belgium, France and Spain, or Africans generally speaking. Moreover, the inflow of immigrants from Eastern Europe doesn't help since Catholic Poles and Christian, white workers from Hungary, the Czech Republic, etc. mix more smoothly with their fellow Europeans, further straining Europe's ethnic patchwork. Gus.