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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DavesM who wrote (14120)	10/27/2003 9:27:19 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793597

no... L1s are paid in whatever their local currency is so assuming you are contracting with say, Satyam... you pay 30K/year say (no benefits) to Satyam, Satyam pays their people much less (typical consulting model- nothing wrong with this, Accenture does it too, in India also no less).. but then when your project isn't scaling or the deliverable isn't happening these people who are supposed to be offshore come out on an L1 cross training visa <wink wink> for a few months to clean it up. This visa (L1) is significantly different from H1-B. H1-B is a pretty good deal for all involved because the intent is that people want to stay here and work. L1 is not that at all, it is a shameless abuse of the system by US corporations. Fortunately I think the loophole is going to be closed soon, there are a few bills in congress. This kind of stuff, most of which was set up in the 90s when we legitimately had a labor problem- is the reason the economy can't recover imho. Despite all the other reasons, (overcapacity, fear of terrorism, etc) my belief is that this export of labor is the KEY reason for pessimism out there. I was having a hard time being bullish earlier this year watching this giant sucking sound take place in my field and others but now that some of these loopholes (the bad ones, not h1-b which is cool in moderation) are being closed and the real costs of offshoring without cheating are being accounted for, I am much more optimistic. These articles like this BW piece are making the rounds, and CFOs are seeing where they can and cannot use offshoring, and we will start to hire again. Then, watch the tech "overcapacity" get sucked up right away imho.