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B. S. Raghavan

IN A context in which legislatures of some States in the US have sought to ban offshore outsourcing and engagement of non-American workers and immigrants, it is not surprising that the suicide at California of an employee of the Bank of America following his replacement by a H-1B visa holder should have fuelled the already simmering resentment among American workers.

A number of outfits such as the National Association for the Employment of Americans, the Organisation for Rights of American Workers, and the Programmer's Guild, have jointly decided to mount protest campaigns and picketing on a nation-wide scale to force the US companies, the Bush Administration and the US Congress to stop issuing H-1B and L-1 visas and legislate against outsourcing.

Their spokesperson claims that they represent, "hundreds of thousands of technology service sector workers laid off and replaced by imported workers through the H-1B and L-1 non-immigrant visa programme and offshore outsourcing".

According to them, the situation for American workers has become "desperate", since nine out of 10 American IT jobs last year had gone to H-1B and L-1 visa holders.

In their estimate, there are over 1.5 million H-1B visa holders comfortably accommodated in the US in jobs that should have gone to over one million American IT workers on the streets looking for work.

The situation as it is emerging poses a triple dilemma. First, the engagement of non-Americans or outsourcing of their operations by the US firms are an essential part of their cost-cutting efforts without which they cannot come out of the financial squeeze and retain their competitive edge.

Yielding to the protests and still taking care of the bottomlines may be like the squaring of a circle to them.

Especially so, since it is alien to business culture to import sentiment into decisions which, by their very nature, ought to be hard-headed because they affect viability and profitability.

The second dilemma is one that confronts policymakers both in the US and in countries such as India and China.

It is not that they have deliberately brought about a situation in which workers of foreign origin are elbowing out American workers. This is the culminating effect of the laws of economics running their natural course.

Also, remember, those loosely called immigrant workers, besides being less expensive, are often better skilled and more industrious. Is it wise to meddle with a natural phenomenon?

The third dilemma is more serious. It is "damned if you do, and damned if you don't!" Interfering with the processes of a free market economy, especially in the services sector, would have ugly global repercussions.

On the other hand, any prolonged dithering over the demands of the sons of the soil might lead to hate attacks and even violent social upheavals.

Why not ask a specially created Study Group on Services in WTO for advice?

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