What ails the USA

U.S. cos can't find American engineers, turn to hire Indians
Monday, 06 September 2010, 17:17 IST

Mumbai: The dearth of engineers in the U.S. due to which companies have no other choice but to hire foreign skilled workers to meet their requirements in American companies. Cognizant says that it has 57 recruitment staff in the U.S. looking for local engineers but due to unavailability of skilled workers in U.S., the company is forced to import Indians on work visas, reports Joe Leahy from Financial Times

"If you look at the core of what we do, the technology work, the US simply doesn't have the talent base today. Although unemployment in the US today is high, IT unemployment is still very low," said Francisco D'Souza, President and Chief Executive, Cognizant.

The border security law was passed by U.S. last month, that will be partly funded by doubling the cost of visas for IT workers, a move that will mostly affect Indian outsourcing companies.

Indian outsourcing companies support a bulk of their staff in India and keep some of its employees in the U.S., who would work closely with the clients.

"About 70 per cent of US PhD students are foreign born and are often hired in the US, making their way into Silicon Valley or government agencies such as Nasa," said Partha Iyengar, of Gartner, the consultancy. "The bigger challenge for the US is, if they start to lose this talent at the lower end, the innovation engine that has been driving the economy starts to dry up," Iyengar added.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, India's undergraduate university courses produce about 600,000 engineers a year compared with about 84,000 in the U.S. in the academic year of 2007-08.

S.Gopalakrishnan, Chief Executive of Infosys Technologies, India's second-largest IT company, said the group had 10,000 staff in the U.S. but only 1,600 were nationals or permanent residents. The company wanted to hire 1,000 people a year in the US but faced a scarcity of talent. "It is a struggle," he said

USA has become what it is because of immigration from the poorer countries.
They got the best of the talent from the developing countries who spent money on their education and when the time came for paying back, these talents went to the developed countries. We called it brain drain.
What did the USA do in the mentime.
They produced samples like Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Madonna.
These are the people who wasted their youth and induced others to follow them.
Typical story of the ant and the grass-hopper.
They believed in just spending. It became a spending economy and now has become spent.
Even now, when they are steeped in debt right up to their noses, they go about policing the world and supporting the wrong regimes.
They support democracy at home but encourage dictators in the rest of the world.
I pity the USA.
If they stop the talent from coming by raising the visa fees, there is only one way the USA can go, DOWN.
Of course, it is already going down, but if it is possible to go DOWNER, they will.