Bah Humbug
Bah Humbug
Date: Tuesday, December 24, 2002 11:31 PM
H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
Bah Humbug! Here are some annoying articles that will be sure to ruin your
Christmas spirit!
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http://www.khou.com/business/122202dnbusbpo.65993.html
In digital age, U.S. records going global
12/22/2002
By CRAYTON HARRISON / The Dallas Morning News
MONTERREY, Mexico – Drawings of American teeth flash across the computer
screens in an office building in the suburbs of Mexico's third-largest city.
They're part of a dental patient's insurance records, used by employees of
Affiliated Computer Services Inc. to compile information into databases.
>From health claims to credit card applications, Americans' personal data are
increasingly traveling the globe through a vast, little-seen network of
people and computers.
Thanks to telecommunications and computer networks, companies such as
Dallas-based ACS can handle routine paperwork for American businesses far
outside U.S. borders – slashing their costs and fueling the growth of a
young industry known as business process outsourcing.
"The offshore model in system integration and outsourcing is the most
important strategic shift in a decade," said Greg Gould, an analyst with
Goldman Sachs.
This sector of the digital economy may be low on glamour. The international
piece isn't large, either – perhaps 5 percent of the work is done outside
the United States, analysts say.
"I do expect to see high growth, but it's still an extremely emerging
market," said Rebecca Scholl, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc.
And to most Americans, it's an invisible market. One of the largest
companies in the industry, ACS nevertheless keeps a low profile, right down
to its nondescript headquarter buildings on North Central Expressway near
downtown Dallas.
The creator of the computer services industry, Plano-based Electronic Data
Systems Corp., is known more for big system integration computer projects
and enjoys a much higher profile.
But it is a chief ACS rival in the business of moving Americans' back-office
functions thousands of miles from the actual back office.
While other competitors concentrate on smaller portions of the business
process outsourcing market, such as handling just payroll data or financial
transactions, ACS and EDS have become clearinghouses for a variety of
processing jobs. They encourage companies in many industries to hand over
their routine paperwork.
EDS has been expanding its offshore facilities, and more than half of its
138,000 employees work outside the United States.
Of ACS' 40,000 employees, more than 10,000 are outside the United States,
including workers in Mexico, Guatemala, Ghana and Spain.
The offices work with ACS' U.S. facilities, passing information back and
forth via the Internet. ACS' clients can choose whether they want their
information to leave the country. Allowing some of the paperwork to be
processed offshore can make the price a lot cheaper.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. decided to try the offshore work in December
1999, when it awarded ACS a contract to process dental claims.
"It's been a very successful experience," said MetLife vice president Carlos
Creamer. "Doing it in-house, we were processing 90 percent of the claims,
from start to finish, in 10 days. Doing outsourcing to ACS, we're now able
to process 80 percent of the claims within four days, with fewer mistakes."
How it works
MetLife and other insurance companies each have specific requirements for
how ACS handles their work. Generally, here's how a claim would go through
the system:
• A dental patient, perhaps one from Dallas, has a cavity filled and gives
the dentist his insurance information. The dentist sends a claim for the
bill to an address provided by an insurer.
• The address is actually for ACS, which receives the claim at one of its
U.S. offices, such as its facilities near Salt Lake City. U.S. workers make
sure the claim is in the right place and scan it into a computer, creating a
digital image of the document.
• The digital image is electronically sent to an offshore facility, where a
worker such as María del Refugio Castillo Rubio pulls it up on her screen.
She looks at the digital image and enters the information – Social Security
numbers, patient identification numbers, names, addresses, diagnoses – into
a database, where the insurer's system can decide whether to accept or
reject the claim.
Ms. Castillo and her colleagues sit in a clean, well-lit office in the
suburbs of Monterrey, a Mexican city best known for its huge industrial base
of manufacturing plants. They are grouped according to their clients and sit
in rooms filled with long rows of computer screens.
Ms. Castillo, like many of her co-workers, is a mother. Her husband works
during the day, selling electronic equipment. She works at night, helping to
support her four boys, ages 21, 15, 14 and 11.
Onto Ms. Castillo's computer screen flash images of dental records, each
showing an illustration of the top and bottom rows of teeth, with dentists'
notes about problem areas.
ACS determines which facility will receive paperwork, based on the
complexity of the records.
A document with a lot of handwritten information – one that might require
judgment calls – might stay in the United States.
The 850 employees of ACS' Monterrey facility get documents that require some
decision- making. Offices in Guatemala, with 1,600 workers, and Ghana, with
1,100, receive less complex documents.
Instant analysis
Once the information from the document has been entered in the database and
checked for errors, ACS can run a simple computer program that analyzes the
data and makes sure the claim is acceptable. Then ACS workers check the
claims to make sure the computer has made the right decision. At that point,
the health insurance company can pay the dentist in Dallas or deny the
claim.
It may sound straightforward, but analysts say it can be tough to manage
such a vast network of employees in different countries with varying
customs, legal requirements and employment bases.
"It takes years to develop, to smooth out the political and bureaucratic
stuff," said Goldman Sachs' Mr. Gould.
In Ghana, for instance, ACS had to determine what medical care it should
provide employees.
"When we opened in Ghana, we had to provide medical personnel on-site," said
Lynn Blodgett, president of business process outsourcing at ACS. "But since
then, we've been able to develop relationships with some clinics."
The investment ACS has made in its offshore facilities began to pay off
wildly this year. In a slumping economy, outsourcing back-office work
started sounding more attractive to many a corporate executive.
ACS gradually entered the business process outsourcing market in the
mid-1990s and began a major focus on the business in 2000. It had fiscal
2002 revenue of $3.1 billion, nearly 48 percent higher than sales the year
before.
The company does much of its work with the federal government and with
states, processing Medicaid claims and doing other administrative tasks. But
a growing number of companies have started considering the company as they
look to save money on their paperwork duties, including human resources,
finance and accounting.
To keep growing, though, ACS has to persuade more and more clients to send
sometimes- sensitive data offshore. Security is one of its top concerns.
Good track record
The company gives clients several options for how it will handle data, and
U.S. regulations on patient information apply even if the data have been
shipped overseas. Clients can require ACS to put employees through
background checks and make them sign confidentiality agreements.
Because workers at each facility are divided into different rooms based on
their client, they can't see a competitor's paperwork.
Clients often do physical security checks, and they like what they see, Mr.
Blodgett said.
"We don't have printers or paper in the room, so the employees can't print
the images they're viewing," he said. "And we have lockers outside the
workspace so people don't take personal things in."
Even if a worker managed to sneak a notebook in, the time he would take to
copy information down would be noticed because the worker would not be able
to type as quickly as the others, Mr. Blodgett said.
"The idea of having people be productive, then measuring their productivity,
is a security measure," he said. The company hasn't had a security breach
yet, he said.
Other challenges
Of course, security concerns apply at home as well as abroad. Overseas, ACS
and its competitors face some distinct challenges as they try to expand
their global operations. "You have set-up costs, and it takes more energy to
manage relationships because it's overseas and you have to go there
sometimes," said Ms. Scholl of Gartner. "The cost is going to be an issue."
And if an offshore facility were to come under a military or terrorist
attack, companies would be much more hesitant to send data there.
"The real barrier is customers who are worried about geopolitical risk in
some of these countries," said Rod Bourgeois, an analyst at Sanford
Bernstein.
But the offshore movement keeps growing.
EDS has offices in Canada and India. Accenture Ltd. has facilities in Spain
and the Czech Republic. The Philippines, South Africa and Ireland host
offices for more and more U.S. businesses.
"There's definitely going to be continued interest in making moves," Mr.
Bourgeois said. "I think you're going to see an offshore facility literally
on every continent. Actually, I guess you've already seen that."
E-mail charrison@dallasnews.com
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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=30596887
WTO visa norms to help professionals
GANGWAY / SUDHIR SHAH
[ SUNDAY, DECEMBER 08, 2002 12:17:23 PM ]
Is it true that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has suggested that
America should create a special category of visa for professionals
travelling to America to provide special services there and that now it
would be necessary for the US government to issue visas to all business
people?
Kiran H. Bhatt, Ahmedabad
WTO has proposed issuance of GATS (General Agreement on Trade-in-Services)
Visas to solve problems concerning movement of professionals from one
country to another.
These category of visas are suggested to all countries and not only to the
US. The object is that service professionals may travel to other countries
for a certain period of time.
US and almost all other countries do have special category of visas for
businessmen travelling to their country for business purposes. General
criteria prescribed for a business visa by all the countries are almost
alike.
The applicant should have business genuine intentions to travel to that
country, should have sufficient funds to meet with the expenses of
travelling, lodging and boarding in that country and should have sufficient
family and financial ties which would make them return to their own country
upon the expiry of the visa period.
Since September 11, 2001 the US and almost all other countries are hesitant
to issue business or any other kind of visa to persons who are from the
terrorist designated countries or have a background which would indicate
their connection with terrorist activities.
GATS visa, which is suggested by WTO, to facilitate free movement of
professionals, is nothing more than the present business category of visas.
No country will issue such visas without verifying the genuine intention and
the background of the applicant.
Is it true that it will now be almost impossible for the Indian student to
receive loans for studying in MBA programmes in America?
Markand A. Joshi, Mumbai
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/sat/news/news_1n7salinas.html
Salinas a NAFTA conference headliner
Mexican ex-leader hailed and hated
By Jerry Kammer
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
December 7, 2002
WASHINGTON – Carlos Salinas, the embattled former Mexican president who was
first hailed as a genius for modernizing the Mexican economy and then
despised for leading the country over the brink of a massive peso
devaluation, will be a featured attraction here Monday at a conference to
evaluate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Salinas will join two other key NAFTA architects, former U.S. President
George H.W. Bush and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, to
discuss the legacy of the controversial agreement, which was unveiled in
1992
and went into effect in 1994.
Their joint appearance will kick off two days of NAFTA reviews at the
Woodrow
Wilson Center.
The event will mark a rare public appearance for Salinas, who is roundly
despised in Mexico because of the devastating peso devaluation and recession
that staggered the country shortly after his term ended in 1994. He has
lived
most of the time since then in self-imposed exile, first in Ireland and then
in Cuba.
Salinas has been dogged by reports of widespread corruption, stemming not
only from his rapid-fire privatization of the economy but also from the
scandalous life of his brother Raúl.
Raúl Salinas is in jail, convicted on charges of plotting a murder that
wrote
a new chapter in Mexico's long, melodramatic and often farcical history of
political intrigue. Revelations that he squirreled away tens of millions of
dubiously obtained dollars in Swiss banks only lengthened the suspicions
that
shadowed his brother.
Sidney Weintraub, an expert on Mexico at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said Carlos Salinas leaves a mixed legacy of scandal
and accomplishment.
"In some respects, he wasn't the most savory character in the world, but he
profoundly transformed Mexico, and I think for the better," Weintraub said.
Weintraub said the Salinas-era reforms pulled Mexico decisively away from
long-standing protectionist policies that erected tariff walls, behind which
much of Mexican business grew fat and inefficient, at the cost of the
nation's overall economic health.
To win acceptance of NAFTA, Salinas exercised persuasive talents that
Mexican
historian Enrique Krauze said made him "the best international salesman ever
born in Mexico." Salinas touted the agreement as a sure-fire program for
economic growth.
Proclaiming that Mexico was committed to "export products, not people," he
also declared that it would reduce illegal immigration to the United States
by building hope in Mexico.
Some parts of the Mexican economy have flourished with NAFTA's preferential
access to U.S. markets. Others haven't.
"Whereas wage ratios between Mexico and the United States were 8 to 1 before
NAFTA's implementation, they are now 10 to 1," UCSD political scientist
Peter
H. Smith and Canadian scholar Edward J. Chambers report in their
just-published book, "NAFTA in the New Millennium."
Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
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http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/4750321.htm
Posted on Mon, Dec. 16, 2002
Student visas provide some a path to U.S. residency
BY JACK CHANG
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BERKELEY, Calif. - KRT NEWSFEATURES
(KRT) - The official literature touts foreign student programs as bridge
builders between the United States and the rest of the world. It speaks of
promoting cultural understanding, lending skills to needy countries and
otherwise striving for harmony and peace.
At least, that is how school administrators defended such programs after
Sept. 11 when federal legislators began scrutinizing foreign student
policies after learning that one of the hijackers may have entered the
country on a student visa.
In practice, however, many students see such programs in more pragmatic
terms.
Faced with few other avenues for immigrating to the United States, many
foreigners view the student route as among the most accessible, and they can
choose among a seemingly endless range of options, if they can afford pay
thousands of dollars in tuition.
Most immigrants receive visas because they have close relatives here, are
fleeing war or persecution, or have found an employer who will hire them.
For the millions without the luck or misfortune of such circumstances,
migrating to the United States is nearly impossible.
Coming as a foreign student, however, is in many ways much easier:
Applicants must only show they have enough money to pay, be accepted by a
college and pass a general background check.
After graduation, the U.S. government allows such students to remain in the
United States and work for a year to gain "practical training," which gives
them a chance to establish ties that may help them win long-term work
permits.
"Surely, a lot of international students come in with this idea of staying,"
said Berkeley resident Khushru Irani, an Indian citizen who is awaiting his
work permit after earning his master's degree in urban design at University
of California Berkeley. He now works under practical training provisions and
said he has not yet decided if he wants to stay in the country permanently.
"Our home countries probably need our skills more than any city in the U.S.,
but the opportunities just aren't available there."
No agency or organization keeps conclusive statistics on the share of
foreign students who successfully switch to work permits or permanent
residency after graduation.
Immigration and Naturalization Service records track the trend on a
year-to-year basis as a share of everybody who becomes a permanent resident,
which is usually the last step before citizenship.
According to the most recent INS numbers, 16,161 people who had originally
entered the country as students became permanent residents in 2000, about 4
percent of everyone who made the switch.
Another 2,867 people who became permanent residents in 2000 entered as
"exchange visitors," a category that includes a good number of foreign
students. Many students could have crossed U.S. borders as tourists, then
switched to student status while in the country, a practice that the INS
made more difficult this year.
The share of permanent residents originally entering as foreign students is
greater among immigrants from some Asian countries: 17 percent for Chinese
and Taiwanese, 16 percent for Koreans, and 21 percent for Japanese.
Data varies widely when examining how many of the more than 582,996 foreign
students now in the United States stay in the country after graduation.
A study by George Borjas, a Harvard University professor who regularly
argues for reduced immigration levels, estimates that about 13 percent of
all foreign students stay permanently in the country, mostly through
marriage to a U.S. citizen.
Los Angeles immigration attorney Adam Green, however, offers wildly clashing
numbers, estimating that as many as 75 percent of Asian students stay
permanently, mostly by finding work with a U.S. company.
"They come as students, and they change to an H1-B (work visa), and then go
to green cards," Green said at a recent international educators' conference
in San Jose. "They went to school here, and they get contacts with
companies."
The employment route is not as easy as it looks, however, especially in a
weak economy with plenty of U.S. citizens looking for work, said Gloria
Zarabozo, an international student adviser at Diablo Valley College in
Pleasant Hill.
To win a work visa for a foreigner, a U.S. company must declare to the INS
that it cannot hire a U.S. citizen or permanent resident for the same job.
"You don't have a lot of H visas offered if you have huge numbers of
Americans looking for work," Zarabozo said.
Hong Kong native Brian Lee is learning firsthand how hard finding work as a
foreigner can be.
The UC Davis senior said he wants to work at a U.S. biotech company as part
of his practical training year. Staying on with a work visa could be in the
cards later, he said.
The process so far has been unpromising.
Several employers have told Lee that they are unwilling to help him apply
for a work permit when they could more easily hire a U.S. resident. Lee has
been trying to sell his language skills -- he speaks Cantonese and
English -- and his specialized expertise in biological systems engineering
to distinguish himself from native applicants.
"A lot of my friends came here with the idea of finding a job, but a lot
couldn't and went back to their country," Lee said. "For me, there's no
company in Hong Kong that does this kind of thing. Even if I go back,
there's no way for me to use my skills."
The foreign-student industry has seen relentless growth for half a century.
Schools around the United States have drawn more students every year since
1954, according to a report by the Institute of International Education
dubbed "Open Doors." The foreign population made up 4.3 percent of all U.S.
college and graduate students during the 2001-02 school year, the report
found.
With immigration controls tightened after the Sept. 11 attacks, the current
school year's enrollment of foreign students has leveled off but not dropped
significantly at many schools, according to a survey conducted by the
institute of 324 campuses.
In large part, the rise in foreign students over the past few decades has
matched a 30-year immigration boom that has transformed the nation.
The metropolitan areas recently drawing the most foreign students were
metropolitan areas that generally attract many immigrants: New York, Los
Angeles, Boston and the Bay Area, according to the Open Doors report.
Yet the foreign student population is distinctly different from the overall
immigrant population.
The vast majority of students come from Asia and Europe as opposed to Latin
America, the source of much of the overall immigrant stream.
The numbers suggest that students come from more affluent backgrounds: More
than two-thirds pay for their educations out of their own pockets or with
family assistance, the Open Doors report found.
At public schools, foreign students must pay nonresident tuition, which can
run thousands of dollars and several times more than what local residents
pay.
For someone from India, which sends more students to the United States than
any other country, high costs all but weed out anyone but the upper classes.
The average yearly income in India is $460.
"It's expensive to send your kids to the United States, so you need finances
to come," said 20-year-old Resi Astia, a Diablo Valley College student from
Indonesia. "We all come from good families."
Astia pays about $4,000 tuition a year for her community college education,
compared with the less than $300 that a state resident pays. Her father is
an Indonesian government officer.
If students can pay, getting accepted to a U.S. school is relatively easy.
(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
For one thing, foreign students have a bounty of schools from which to
choose. Just the list of Northern Californian schools with INS-certified
programs includes dozens of options ranging from Stanford University to the
Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in rural Blue Lake.
"If students can pass our entrance exam, we believe they can succeed here,"
said Larry Barton, president of Heald College, a nonprofit vocational school
with 11 campuses in three states and about 130 international students.
Some foreigners enlist the aid of professional agents in their home
countries to help them find U.S. programs and, if necessary, lead them to
community colleges where they have a better chance of getting in.
Once students are accepted, they must pass a U.S. State Department
background check and show proof of their finances to get a student visa.
Keeping that visa is not complicated: They are asked to maintain at least a
C average and be enrolled in a minimum of 12 units of courses each semester.
The most popular fields of study for international students are business and
management, engineering and mathematics, and computer science, according to
the Open Doors report.
(STORY CAN END HERE)
Although foreign students take a different path into the United States, the
reasons they leave their homes and try their luck here mirror those of other
immigrants, local students said.
They come because they hunger for opportunities unavailable in their home
countries. Some come to get away from perils back home. Some simply want the
adventure of starting fresh in a new country.
For thousands, the classic U.S. immigration story starts in a classroom.
"If we have the luck to stay here, we will stay here because we love this
country," said DVC student Thomas Tanaka who came from Indonesia. "Our
parents would like us to stay here because it's more peaceful here. All
parents who can pay send their kids to the United States."
© 2002, Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.)
Visit the Contra Costa Times on the Web at http://www.cctimes.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services
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http://www.tradealert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=713
US Trade Representative Celebrates 40 Years of Failure
William R. Hawkins
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
The Office of the United States Trade Representative recently held
a reception to celebrate 40 years of 'achievement' in negotiating foreign
trade agreements. Before the reception, President George W. Bush visited
the USTR headquarters in the historic Winder building.
The Winder building dates back to the mid-19th century and is thus a fitting
place for the USTR office, as the ideology that drives the present USTR,
Robert Zoellick, is rooted in that long ago world of fanciful liberal
notions. The Winder building has been renovated more recently than the
policies of its occupants.
"In looking back over the past 40 years, I join my colleagues and staff in
feeling honored to be a part of a bipartisan legacy of promoting trade
liberalization, and advancing prosperity, freedom, and human progress," said
Zoellick. High sounding words that left out any reference to whether the
net effect has been to advance the economic preeminence of the United States
in the world economy, the basis for America's Superpower status.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis has reported that U.S. net payments on all
worldwide Current Accounts during the Third Quarter were in deficit by $127
billion. This puts the country on track to run a record Current Accounts
deficit for the year of over $500 billion. The BEA noted the main cause for
this financial meltdown was a worsening in the trade deficit.
The trade deficit on goods increased to $123.2 billion in the third quarter
from $122.5 billion in the second. Though exports were up a bit, to $175.7
billion from $172.4 billion in the second quarter; Goods imports increased
to $298.9 billion from $294.9 billion. This means that imports were 70%
higher than exports. Thank you, USTR!
"The strong leadership and skillful negotiations of my predecessors in this
office have propelled the opening of markets throughout the world, creating
new economic opportunities for millions of Americans," Zoellick said. It is
true that U.S. exports have increased since 1962 -- when a position called
the Special Trade Representative was created by President John F. Kennedy,
and that millions of Americans earn their living from exporting. America
has always been a trading nation, though to a much lesser extent than most
major modern economies. But the question is about the net effect of trade,
and that has shifted from good to terrible during the decades since an
independent office was set up to focus on trade as an end in itself.
In 1962, the United States ran a trade surplus in goods of $4.5 billion.
For every $4 worth of imported goods, the U.S. sold $5 worth. Indeed,
America had run a trade surplus on goods every year since the end of World
War II, and would continue to do so until 1971. However, starting in 1971
the U.S. would run mounting trade deficits. For the next thirty years, the
country would enjoy a trade surplus in goods only twice, in 1973 and 1975.
The Trade Act of 1974 elevated the STR to a cabinet-level position within
the Executive Office of the President. Congress also gave the government
more tools to use to protect American firms threatened by import surges or
unfair trade practices. However, the weak and ineffectual Ford
Administration was dominated by 'free traders' like Treasury Secretary
William Simon, who actually welcomed the U.S. trade deficit as a "desirable
shift" because he thought it would help foreign economies grow if they could
export more into the American market -- a position held by the Bush
Administration today.
The desire of those who make U.S. trade policy has too often been oriented
towards some idealized view of the world economy or of private transnational
corporations rather than the U.S. national interest. For example, Zoellick
has just revamped the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
(ACTPN), which is supposed to represent a cross-section of groups affected
by trade. However, the non-partisan reporting service Inside U.S. Trade
described the new ACTPN appointees as "a mix of major Republican campaign
donors, free-trade theologians and a few people with close ties to USTR
Robert Zoellick." There is no one there who will think strategically about
trade's role in improving America's position either at home or abroad.
Nothing better illustrates the rogue nature of the USTR than Zoellick's new
proposal at the World Trade Organization for a "tariff-free world by 2015"
for all manufactured goods. Such a complete 'free trade' regime is exactly
what the transnational corporations want, as it would allow them to place
their factories anywhere they could find cheap labor, low taxes, and lax
regulations, and then ship the output anywhere they wanted. Zoellick
himself knows how the multinationals would run this scheme. In fact it is
revealed in his power point slide show available on the USTR's website.
Under "Benefits to America" nothing is said about new factories or job
creation. Instead, 'free trade' is lauded as an "$18 billion tax cut for
working families" -- assuming they are still working. The next slide
proclaims "A Tariff Free World: Every corner store becomes a duty-free shop
for working families." The emphasis is entirely on cheap imports from
overseas plants.
There is no more wrong-headed notion imaginable for the USTR to embrace. No
family or nation ever got wealthy from consumption. A 'blue light special'
is no substitute for a good job. Consumption is a use for income, it does
not generate income nor does it provide anything for savings which will help
a family (or a nation) build for the future.
This shift in argument by Zoellick is an admission that he has no intention
of pushing for new international rules that would give American firms and
workers an advantage in overseas competition. Zoellick should thus drop the
United States from his title and go back to being known as the Special Trade
Representative, since 'special' interests are all he cares about.
William R. Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the
U.S. Business and Industry Council.
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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_51/b3813112.htm
DECEMBER 23, 2002
MANAGEMENT
Yanking the Welcome Mat for Foreign MBAs
Suddenly, they face big obstacles in the U.S.
Alberto Fumo is the type of student business schools crave. His high marks
and international experience landed the budding financier admission offers
at Yale University's School of Management and Cornell University's Johnson
School. But the Italian native chose London Business School rather than face
a new trifecta of trouble with a U.S. MBA: an imminent drop in work visas, a
hiring slowdown for MBAs, and less school financial aid.
After a decade-long buildup of overseas applicants seeking the prestige--and
salary--of a U.S. business degree, B-schools are concerned about the growing
wariness of others like Fumo. In the 1990s, international students became
the fastest-growing pool of prospective MBA students, helping push total
applications to record highs in 2001. Now, in short order, the weak economy,
coupled with a looming drop in the availability of H-1B work visas, is
taking its toll. International enrollment at BusinessWeek's Top 30 schools
slipped from 32% in 2000 to 30% in 2002 and is estimated to go lower yet in
2004. The ultimate concern for U.S. B-schools is the new unwelcome mat
driving away the world's best candidates. "What is that going to do 10 years
from now to the talent pool?" wonders Vijay Govindarajan, strategy professor
at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck school.
The pipeline may get a lot thinner soon. In October, 2003, a law increasing
the number of H-1B visas is set to expire, chopping available H-1Bs from
195,000 a year to 65,000. The business lobby is poised to fight to maintain
the number, but with the economy soft, it's likely to be an uphill battle.
While MBAs would still make up a small portion of the allotment, if all
visas are issued before students get to commencement, jobless foreign grads
will have no choice but to head home.
That's if they get here in the first place. Admissions officers urge
foreigners to apply early to cope with delays in State Dept. background
checks. "There are some places in the world where we have special concerns,"
says a State Dept. spokesman. Europeans have reported little trouble;
applicants from the Middle East and China can expect tie-ups.
Massive debt, which can exceed $100,000 at top private schools, is also a
problem. Repayment is a high hurdle if you hail from a country where $5,000
is a good yearly wage. They're not supposed to say so when they apply for
the student F-1 visa, but many foreign students--especially those from
developing nations--plan to stay in the U.S. after graduation to help pay
down their debt. But suddenly, staying stateside is far from guaranteed.
Companies with tight budgets and hiring slowdowns are beginning to cut down
on hiring non-U.S. candidates. It can cost upwards of $10,000 in
administrative expenses and legal fees to sponsor one foreign applicant
through the visa process. And since September 11, there's no guarantee the
recruit will be approved by the Immigration & Naturalization Service.
Already, at the University of California at Los Angeles' Anderson School,
only 15% of companies recruiting on campus say they'll consider a foreigner.
Many consumer-products outfits--like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ ) and Procter &
Gamble Co. (PG )--that recruit generalists are sticking to U.S. hires.
"Those types of positions would be very difficult to bring in" on a visa,
says David Wittenberg, director of investment evaluation at Weyerhaeuser Co.
(WY )
To make matters worse, B-schools have become less generous with loans. At
the University of Virginia's Darden School, loans given without a co-signer
will be capped at $34,000 a year, covering only tuition. As its default
rates rise, University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, long considered
among the most generous to foreign students, also capped loans and upped
interest charges this fall.
The changed climate has made foreign students even more anxious in a tight
job market. One student at Darden found that most consulting companies
wouldn't consider him for positions in U.S. offices. He recently sent out
about 25 résumés for summer internship positions and is still hopeful he'll
get one. "I wouldn't be able to pay off my debt if I had to go back to [my
home country]," he laments.
B-school deans across the country are crossing their fingers for an economic
turnaround. Otherwise, they'll watch a decade's worth of work recruiting
foreign students evaporate. "If this happens, we are the losers," says
Govindarajan. It would be a setback felt around the world.
By Brian Hindo in New York
*** Ho! Ho! Ho! Fleece Navidad! ***
N E W S R E L E A S E
Contact: Montserrat Miller (202) 785-1960 Nov. 12, 2002
NEW LAW AUTHORIZING MORE FOREIGN DOCTORS ‘GREAT NEWS’ FOR RURAL TEXAS HEALTH
CARE
A bill signed by President Bush last week will help bring desperately need
doctors to small rural communities across Texas, which has 23 counties with
no doctors and another 19 counties with only one.
The bill raises the number of visas for foreign medical graduates willing to
work in rural communities from 20 per state to 30. The means 500 new
doctors who will be able to save countless lives in rural America, where
they may be the only health care provider available for hundreds of miles.
Foreign doctors studying and completing residencies at local medical schools
and hospitals will have a chance to learn about the new law at the
American College of International Physicians J-1 Physician Conference from
1-5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, at the Houston Marriott Medical Center. The
conference features Connie Berry, director of Texas State 20 J-1 Physician
Waiver Program.
For rural Texas areas shunned by American doctors, the “J-1” waiver program
is the only way to get a doctor to come to their communities. Currently,
more than 2,000 J-1 foreign doctors are serving rural America – including
about 60 in Texas – under the U.S. Department of Agriculture J-1 waiver
program, which closed last February.
USDA began the program because so many rural communities were without
physicians and the J-1 physicians were a talented supply of doctors willing
to work in these areas. The J-1 visas require graduates to return to their
home countries two years after finishing their studies. Some doctors who
agree to work in underserved communities for three years are given J-1
waivers to apply for visas.
Texas Congressman Charlie Stenholm has pointed out that many rural
communities in his 17th Congressional District and elsewhere in Texas would
not have access to health care if it weren’t for a doctor with a J-1 waiver.
Other featured speakers at the conference will include Jan Pederson,
Washington, D.C. attorney and national expert on J-1 physician immigration
issues, as well as other attorneys and experts on obtaining employment and
J-1 waivers.
International physicians and health care providers may register to attend
the conference online at www.usvisainfo.com or at the door on the day of the
meeting. Admission is free.
500 NEW J-1 PHYSICIAN WAIVERS AVAILABLE NOW
What: OBTAINING A J-1 PHYSICIAN WAIVER UNDER THE INCREASED NUMBER OF
AVAILABLE WAIVERS will be the hot topic of the J-1 Physician Conference,
sponsored by American College of International Physicians.
Speaker: Connie Berry, Texas State 20 J1 Physician Waiver Program Director
When: 1-5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16
Where: Houston Marriott Medical Center, 6080 Fannin St., Houston, Tx.
Registration: Online at www.usvisainfo.com, or at the door
Admission: Free
Also Featured: Jan Pederson, Washington, D.C. attorney, national expert on
J1 physician immigration issues as well as other attorneys and experts in
the field of obtaining a J-1 Waiver Job and J-1 Waiver.
*** Ho! Ho! Ho! Fleece Navidad! ***
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=30250370
Indian R&D Market: Growth Time
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 04, 2002 11:57:20 AM ]
India is coming of age as an R&D hub for the global software industry. At a
time when global IT giants are reeling from a slowdown-bitten 2002,
multi-national (MNC) software companies are making major investment
commitments and hiring aggressively in their Indian development centres
Name the software company, and they have talked big bucks and three-figure
recruitments this year. Microsoft, SAP, Orcale, Adobe, Invensys...are all
aggressively expanding their software development capabilities in India.
Take the $1.6 billion graphics software maker Adobe, for instance. It
started off its India development centres six years ago. Today, the company
develops its globally best-selling software ‘Framemaker’ completely out of
India, besides other cutting-edge research.
The company has just moved into a $10-million, 370-engineer facility in
Noida complete with tennis courts and a gym. And to top it all, the company
is planning to increase its 150-strong staff strength by around 50% to 225
within the next six months.
Other examples of software MNCs’ growing confidence in India’s R&D
capability abound. When Bill Gates came to India, amid all the hype of a Rs
2,000 crore investment in India, he also announced the hiking of investment
at the Hyderabad development centre by $25 million, besides taking the
150-odd staff strength to 500 in the next three years.
At the beginning of this fiscal, the world’s largest enterprise resource
planning (ERP) software vendor SAP had announced that its Bangalore labs
will hire 230 more engineers by the next year-end, besides announcing around
23 million euros in fresh investments into its development facility.
Another enterprise software major, Invensys, has decided to add 300 more
engineers at its R&D centre in India, and invest around $5 million more.
The world’s second-largest software maker Oracle too has been on a hiring
spree, picking up 100 employees every month. This year alone, Oracle has
seen its India staff grow by more than 1,000. Oracle plans to take its staff
strength from 2,370 to 4,000 by the end of 2003. Oracle has bought 16,000
square feet of land in Hyderabad to expand its development centre.
There are some companies like the $12-billion Computer Sciences Corporation
which are doing both IT services work and product development projects in
India. CSC is setting up its third India development centre in Noida
staffing 400 engineers.
*** Ho! Ho! Ho! Fleece Navidad! ***
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-tech12dec12.story?null
Tech Jobs Become State's Unwanted Big Export
Hit hard in the global bust, California may see some employment move
overseas for good.
By Evelyn Iritani and Marla Dickerson
Times Staff Writers
December 12 2002
>From Silicon Valley to Boston's Route 128, technology companies are waiting
for a rebound in business spending to pull them out of their slump. But when
the Bay Area and other regional hotbeds emerge from the deep hole left by
the technology crash, they'll find that the landscape looks a lot different.
Many of the jobs lost will not be back.
The global tech bust has forced a dramatic restructuring of the industry as
firms struggle to return to profitability. Companies have shed thousands of
jobs in the United States and Europe while shifting production to lower-cost
countries, mostly in Asia.
Like makers of apparel and toys before them, technology companies say their
survival depends increasingly on performing all but the most sophisticated
tasks offshore.
>From its peak of 5.7 million jobs in early 2001, U.S. technology employment
has plunged by about half a million. More than 100,000 of the job losses
have come in California, according to figures from the American Electronics
Assn., a Washington trade group. Most of these positions have been in
high-tech manufacturing, in which the average wage tops $70,000 a year.
"A lot of those job losses are permanent," said Daniel Wilson, an economist
with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. "The natural cycle of
companies moving production offshore got accelerated."
Experts say tech companies that weather the shakeout will emerge leaner,
meaner and more profitable for their pains. And few doubt Silicon Valley
will remain a world leader in innovation.
Still, the transformation poses serious challenges for states such as
California, which have looked to the technology sector to generate
employment, exports and tax revenue.
"California is not a low-cost place to do business," said Walter Reichert,
director of international relations and trade policy at Hewlett-Packard Co.,
which has shed 16,000 jobs as part of a global restructuring triggered by
its merger with Compaq Computer Corp. "Like our colleagues at IBM and Sun,
we tend to keep our engineering here. But for any kind of assembly work,
we've got to look at other possibilities."
Although many believe the worst is over, the cuts still keep coming. In
recent months, big names such as Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices
Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Applied Materials Inc. and Agere Systems Inc.
have announced layoffs totaling more than 12,000 jobs here and abroad. In
early August, IBM Corp. confirmed it had slashed 15,600 jobs from its
workforce this year.
Plunging global demand for technology equipment, coupled with production
shifts offshore, have wreaked havoc on U.S. exports. Shipments of computers
and electronic products, which account for one-quarter of America's exports,
dropped 16% in 2001.
California's exports have been walloped even harder. Technology is the
state's No. 1 export, accounting for more than half of its sales overseas at
the height of the boom. After reaching a record $61.4 billion in 2000,
California's exports of high-tech goods plunged 18% in 2001 and are down 23%
through the first three quarters of this year.
"California technology firms have to outsource to stay competitive — that
absolutely makes sense," said Ross DeVol, director of regional and
demographic studies for the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. "On the
other hand, these production activities are increasingly taking place
abroad. We're losing employment. We're losing income. We're losing the tax
receipts."
Indeed, the meltdown in California's tech sector has hugeimplications for
the state's economy. Although California's drop in overall employment has
been milder than that of the nation as a whole, a disproportionate share of
its declines has come in high-paid sectors such as information technology,
telecommunications and computer services, leaving the state much worse off
in terms of income than the rest of the country.
Lawmakers in Sacramento used a variety of gimmicks to cover a $24-billion
deficit this year, only to find themselves faced with another
$20-billion-plus chasm heading into the next budget cycle. That's partly the
result of the state's heavy reliance on tax revenue from capital gains,
stock options and bonuses. At its peak in 2000, revenue from these sources
soared to $17.6 billion — accounting for 25% of California's general fund.
But those revenues have fizzled with the bursting of the tech and stock
market bubbles. State officials, who committed to billions in new spending
when coffers were flush, found themselves staring at a yawning deficit
almost overnight.
"It was a 100-year bonanza ... and we spent it," said Ted Gibson, former
chief economist for the California Department of Finance, who is an economic
advisor at Metropolitan West Securities in Sacramento. "Now it's
reality-check time."
Gibson says the eye-popping gains in personal income and job growth that
characterized the late 1990s in California are unlikely to be repeated
anytime soon. Silicon Valley remains mired in what may be the worst downturn
in its history.
The San Jose metropolitan area alone has lost more than 100,000 jobs since
its pre-recession peak in December 2000, while unemployment has risen to a
19-year high of 7.9%. The Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, an alliance of
technology firms, projects that it will be at least five years before
employment in Silicon Valley returns to its previous peak.
"Any of us who think we're going to have the kind of prosperity and instant
wealth and job creation we saw in the late 1990s is really kidding
themselves," said Rick White, chief executiveof TechNet, a Palo Alto-based
technology industry lobbying group. "There is still a lot of overcapacity
and restructuring" ahead.
The turn of fortune has been brutal for workers such as Richard Jerry. The
former technician at Applied Materials once earned nearly $30 an hour
building test fixtures for the Santa Clara, Calif., semiconductor equipment
maker. Laid off for more than a year, his savings and unemployment benefits
exhausted, Jerry recently moved into a Bay Area homeless shelter. Still, the
43-year-old harbors dreams of returning to "the best job I ever had."
"All we need is another upturn" in business, he said.
Chances are, it won't be so simple. Experts say what began as a cyclical
slump has forced permanent structural changes to the U.S. industry that
won't be undone when business revives.
Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems Inc. and Motorola Inc. for
years have outsourced production to contract manufacturers such as
Flextronics International Ltd. and Solectron Corp., which in turn are
rapidly shifting their operations to lower-cost foreign facilities as
profits have plunged.
Customers are being squeezed, "so we're being squeezed," said Jim Sacherman,
the San Jose-based chief marketing officer for Flextronics, which has cut
thousands of jobs and closed plants. The multinational company announced
Friday that it would shutter a plant in Irvine that makes printed circuit
boards.
"Even when things turn around," Sacherman added, "it's not like all of a
sudden we're going to pick up all that and bring it back."
Others are following suit. After growing 50% to 60% a year during the boom
times, Milpitas, Calif.-based Solectron has shed 35,000 jobs in the last two
years, most of them in North America and Europe, while expanding production
at its three facilities in China.
And the list goes on. Fiber-optic equipment maker JDS Uniphase Corp., with
headquarters in San Jose and Ottawa, has beefed up its Chinese operations
while sacking more than 20,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada. Santa
Clara-based National Semiconductor Corp., which has shed 1,100 employees and
contractors, most of them manufacturing employees in the U.S. and Scotland,
just broke ground on a new chip plant in Suzhou, China, that will employ
500. Motorola Inc., which slashed 7,000 jobs this year, has aggressively
shifted its chip production to contract manufacturers in Asia. The
Schaumberg, Ill.-based company plans to invest $1.3 billion in research and
development facilities in China during the next four years.
Some say the U.S. has no choice but to keep climbing the knowledge ladder,
focusing on production of higher-value software and services and pouring
billions of dollars into new arenas such as biomedicine, nanotechnology and
the wireless Internet.
"Manufacturing is not just people with dirty hands in a grimy building
making widgets," said Doug Henton, president of Silicon Valley-based
Collaborative Economics. "It could be people at a computer manufac-turing
software.... We're still making things. But what we make is different, and
how we make it is different."
Yet others say California's high costs and inhospitable business climate
have helped accelerate high-tech manufacturing's move away from the Golden
State. Carl Guardino, president of the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group,
said too many state officials seem unable to grasp that much of the
technology wealth created in California has come not just from design of
computers and other high-tech products but from their production and export.
Cut too deep into the manufacturing base, and Silicon Valley could lose its
ability to maintain its technological predominance, he warns.
"I feel like renting a horse and dressing up like Paul Revere," Guardino
said. "Too many folks are taking for granted what is at stake here."
Still, the state faces huge challenges in retaining, much less expanding,
its high-tech production. California's tax structure motivates
sales-tax-hungry communities to favor strip malls and auto dealers over
factories. Lofty electricity rates, workers' compensation costs and real
estate prices have made the state's business costs among the highest in the
nation. And looming budget deficits mean that businesses' fees and taxes are
likely to go up in the near term, rather than down.
Although the recent job losses largely have been in lower-cost commodity
goods suchas semiconductors, cell phones and computer components,even
higher-value products face stepped-up competition from places such as China
and India, which have invested in scientific education and other
infrastructure crucial for technology firms.
What's more, it's not just production jobs going abroad. A growing number of
U.S. companies, including Dell Computer Corp., General Electric Co. and
Citibank, have shifted call centers and other information technology service
operations offshore to slash costs.
A recent report by Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research projects that
3.3 million positions, in activities from credit card processing and
back-office accounting to software development, computer programming and
engineering, will migrate to countries such as India, Russia and China in
the next15 years.
If the United States wants to stay on the cutting edge, it must do a better
job of educating its workforce, particularly in science, mathematics and
physics, said William Archey, president and chief executive of the American
Electronics Assn.
"We've got to do something that makes the idea of engineering and science
far more attractive to young kids," he said. "I have jokingly said, instead
of 'L.A. Law,' we need 'L.A. Geek.' "
Unless some difficult choices are made, experts warn, the U.S., and
particularly states such as California, could be left on the sidelines of
producing the next "new thing."
"We're not going to be able to stop production from leaving the state, but
we've got to make some decisions about what we want to keep here," said
DeVol of the Milken Institute.
"If we just throw our arms up and say, 'It's the inevitable sequence of
events that this production goes to low-cost countries,' then that's what
will happen."
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at
latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article, go to
www.lats.com/rights.
*** Ho! Ho! Ho! Fleece Navidad! ***
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021213S0038
Budget-bled Execs Are Looking East ... Way East
U.S. businesses are outsourcing more-strategic tasks to companies in India.
By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek
Dec 16, 2002 (12:00 AM)
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021213S0038
An Indian services firm's role in an outsourcing contract with the New York
Stock Exchange shows that the overseas outsourcing of higher-level processes
is becoming more common. Having mastered tactical IT projects, Indian firms
are even starting to do payroll and transaction processing.
The exchange has just completed the first phase of a project managed by
Wipro Technologies in Bangalore, India. The project, which uses a Java-based
application to manage data that determines the eligibility of companies to
be listed on the NYSE, will expand to include applications that power the
NYSE's regulatory-compliance processes.
Wipro Technologies in India will run the NYSE's business-compliance
processes.
U.S. businesses can trim 30% to 40% of a task's labor costs by contracting
overseas, says Forrester Research director John McCarthy. Many Indian firms
adhere to strict process controls that can be more stringent than U.S.
standards. "This isn't like manufacturing, where companies had to trade off
quality to get lower costs," McCarthy says.
Wipro just bought American Management Systems' global energy practice so it
can sell vertical-market services. But compatriots Infosys, Satyam, and
Wipro have to beware: U.S. outsourcers are moving more operations overseas.
Application-management specialist Corio Inc., for example, is forming an
Indian subsidiary, and Hewlett-Packard is moving chunks of its service
operations offshore.
If nothing else, companies such as HP and Corio will have one advantage over
indigenous companies, according to analysts: They already own a lot of big
client relationships.
*** Ho! Ho! Ho! Fleece Navidad! ***
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_109166.html
Failure to draw immigrants may threaten local economy
By Marisol Bello
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, December 22, 2002
If recent immigrants to America looking for a place to settle can be
compared to a high school dance, Pittsburgh is the pimply-faced geek with
braces and a bow tie, leaning against the gymnasium wall.
While international newcomers have flooded into many American cities over
the last decade, they are ignoring the Steel City, despite Oakland and its
university campuses.
Census numbers released this year show that of the 50 largest metropolitan
areas in the nation, Pittsburgh ranks second to last in its share of
foreign-born residents, with 3 percent of the region's population having
been born outside the United States. Only Cincinnati has fewer foreign-born
residents.
"This is a big issue for Pittsburgh," said Richard Florida, a professor of
regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University and author of
"The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's Transforming Work, Leisure,
Community and Everyday Life."
"It's not something people here are serious about, to their own
disadvantage," Florida said. "But they need to look at the problem.
Pittsburgh is a patient in need of electrotherapy."
Pittsburgh's political and civic leaders say they want more immigrants, but
there is little, if any, action to back it up, say Florida and other labor
and economic development experts.
As a result, they say, Pittsburgh, with all its amenities and close-knit
neighborhoods, is missing out on the economic benefits that accompany recent
arrivals.
What's more, if Pittsburgh doesn't reverse the trend, the region faces a
work force crisis in the next 10 to 20 years.
A Duquesne University report released this summer says that as older people
retire and fewer young ones are available to take their place, the region
may face a shortage of as many as 125,000 workers within a decade, limiting
growth and development. The shortage could reach 400,000 in 20 years.
"Immigration is not the sole solution, but it is a big part of it," said
Silvio Baretta, director of research for the Center for Competitive
Workforce Development at Duquesne University. "Regions are in competition
for these people … and we are not doing well."
Part of the problem is that the issue is not visible, said Brian Kelley, the
economic development director for the Heinz Endowments, which work with
agencies trying to attract immigrants to the region. About a half-dozen
agencies focus on various aspects, but no one coordinates their efforts, he
said.
"The question for the region is: How painful does it need to be before
everybody wakes up?" Kelley said. "It's like the ozone layer. You can't see
it."
Kelley said other cities faced similar issues, but they saw growth because
of large numbers of foreign-born settlers.
A study of census data, released earlier this month, backs him up, showing
that immigrants account for half of all workers who joined the U.S. labor
force in the last 10 years.
Without them, regions such as New England and New York would have seen no
labor or population growth, according to the study by the Center for Labor
Market Studies at Boston's Northeastern University.
The report shows that immigration is redefining the profile of the American
work force and in some cases transforming entire industries. The study said
immigrants were overrepresented in retail trade, manufacturing and service
occupations, such as short-order cooks, barbers and nurses' aides.
But not in Pittsburgh.
It's not that the city isn't seeing any new immigrants. Between 1990 and
2000, the region experienced a 12 percent increase in the foreign-born
population, with most of the newcomers arriving from India, China and Korea.
They come through the universities or to work in technology or health care.
They are just not arriving in Pittsburgh in the kind of numbers that they
were during the first half of the 1900s, when Eastern Europeans dramatically
changed the region's industrial towns.
"I've seen it open up in the last two to three years," said Ravitej Reddy,
an information technology consultant who settled in Pittsburgh 15 years ago
from his native India.
He's in a good place to know. Jitters, the Shadyside coffee shop he opened
in 1996, has become a magnet for nearby residents, including many new
immigrants.
Reddy attributes the changes to the heavy recruiting in the high-tech
industry that has brought immigrants from around the world, particularly
India. It took time, though, he said. Back in the early 1990s, when
high-tech companies around the country were recruiting foreigners,
traditional Pittsburgh firms were hesitant. But they finally came around, he
said.
He and others point to the recruiting success of younger local companies
such as iGate, a high-tech company founded by a foreign-born resident.
Locally, more than two-thirds of iGate's 250 employees were born outside the
United States.
Reddy, who came to Pittsburgh as a student, owns Velocity Computer
Consulting, with clients throughout the tri-state area. He started a
subdivision called Velocity Healthcare, which focuses on recruiting foreign
nurses to help ease the nursing shortage crippling the health care industry.
His company has so far recruited 20 nurses from India, but none are coming
to Pittsburgh. Local hospitals like his concept but haven't committed, he
said. Larger hospitals, such as Allegheny General Hospital, are recruiting
nurses from the Philippines and other countries, but it is not a standard.
Companies in all industries, as well as local government and other
institutions, have to recruit more if Pittsburgh is to reverse its
immigration trend, Florida said. Part of the problem, however, is the area's
pervasive resistance to change, he said.
"Pittsburgh is a closed town," Florida said. "Look at the foreign-born
students — most don't stay. They don't see Pittsburgh as a welcoming place."
In short, Pittsburgh needs an attitude adjustment.
"It's a city that wants to stay in the 1950s," Florida said. "Pittsburgh
wants to recreate its glory days."
Florida said the city could learn from places such as Schenectady, N.Y.,
where the mayor of the aging town of 62,000 recruits Guyanese immigrants
from New York City, leading them on bus tours and touting the low cost of
living.
"It's a typical Northeast industrial-type city," said Mayor Albert
Jurczynski, a Republican serving his second term. "It's home to General
Electric. When I graduated from high school in ’74, there were 29,000 people
working at GE. Today, there are 4,000."
The town hemorrhaged residents and home values spiraled as more abandoned
houses littered the property rolls.
Sound familiar?
Schenectady, though, had a small but growing population of Guyanese
immigrants who had fled the crowded streets of New York. The mayor
befriended leaders in the community, who asked him if he and his staff would
be willing to talk to the newcomers about Schenectady.
The talks evolved this summer into weekend trips in which busloads of New
York Guyanese residents schlepped to Schenectady for a day to hear the
mayor's sales pitch. The excursions ended with a stop at the home of the
mayor's in-laws for a taste of the homemade wines made by the elderly
Italian couple.
The mayor has immersed himself in all things Guyanese not only to make the
3,000 or so residents living in his city feel at home, but also to attract
new ones. He's visited their communities in Queens, hobnobbed with their
business leaders and sampled their famed El Dorado rum.
"They're a hard-working people," Jurczynski said. "They do not believe in
public assistance as a group, unless it's absolutely necessary. So right
away I felt good about them. What mayor wouldn't?"
Beth Osborne Daponte, a senior research scientist at CMU's H. John Heinz III
School of Public Policy and Management, says the problem in dying industrial
cities isn't a lack of immigrants. It's an unhealthy economy.
If Pittsburgh wants to attract domestic or international newcomers, it needs
to create more jobs. Businesses, universities and civic and political
leaders need to come up with a long-term effort to fuel job growth, Daponte
said.
"There's a flaw in the logic that if we had more immigrants, we would have
more jobs," she said. "Immigrants come because we have jobs.
"What I see is everyone running around like a chicken with its head cut off,
but there is no well-thought-out strategy," she said. "How we go there is a
huge conversation that I think the community is trying to have, but it gets
distracted."
If Reddy is any indication, there is hope that new immigrants will choose
Pittsburgh before the dance to find a home ends.
Reddy planned to leave Pittsburgh after graduation, but he stayed when
offered a job at a local high-tech company, deciding to see if the ’Burgh
was for him.
"Pittsburgh offers a lot more opportunities than bigger cities," he said.
"You can look around, see what Pittsburgh lacks and bring it here."
Marisol Bello can be reached at mbello@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7994.
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