India Outsourcers Find Back Door in Canada 717
securitas writes "Metro International newspapers Toronto edition reports that more Indian companies are opening back doors into the United States by setting up shop in Canada. The issue of outsourcing, offshoring and nearshoring has become a hot issue, with the 2004 presidential election less than a week away. Candidate John Kerry has said he will close the tax loophole that makes it advantageous to outsource call centers."
Near-shore is still off-shore (Score:4, Interesting)
Bush said druing a debate that he will let Mexicans to come to US to work legally, and gradually obtain residency. If this happens, the Canadian-Indian issue is small in comparison.
Maybe the ideal "screening" is based on the percentage of employees' residency status, so if over 50% of a Canadian company is from developing countries, it's no deal.
this doesn't worry me, for some reason. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:why do we care what kerry said? (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot is not a TV or radio network. There is no reason for it to give "equal time" or avoid showing bias. It's "news for nerds" - it doesn't claim to be nonpartisan (or partisan).
The internet is not the same as other "media outlets", and Slashdot has no "responsibility" to be any certain way.
Thats transitivity for ya (Score:5, Interesting)
Also please remember that the US has spent the last twenty five years literally ramming free trade down the world's collective throat (admittedly, an effort made on behalf of the financial elite, not workers).
Exchange rates (Score:2, Interesting)
HTH
Not that I think Bush has a clue what he's doing. A one trick pony who isn't even very good at that trick.
Close the loophole and raise the taxes (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:why do we care what kerry said? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a fact that outsourcing is a hot issue (for some). It's a fact Kerry has made that statement a number of times that he'll fix it. Will he? Can he? What is he going to fix exactly? I doubt it, but it's a pursuasive (and noteable) statement.
Now the fact that
Re:Near-shore is still off-shore (Score:4, Interesting)
However, if they are working legally, then they have to be working at least at minimum wage, which means there is little or no incentive to hire them rather than an unemployed american citizen, which means that basically they're contributing to the economy. I believe maddox wrote something about this,
Re:Tech Support (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Tech Support (Score:3, Interesting)
Pot Kettle situation (Score:5, Interesting)
Roman Empire (Score:2, Interesting)
The US Empire must allow people who CAN do the job to do it. Otherwise it too will collapse.
OT but what the hell. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want German knives the messermeisters are a great value and are as good as wusthofs IMHO.
If you want the best bang for the buck I'd go with forschner or Tramontina Professional Series. Tramontina are made in Brazil and are an exceptional value for being forged.
If I was buying something for my mother I'd by the tramontina, for myself I am saving up for a nenox.
Re:Kerry in the senate... (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, minimum wage jobs should not be held by people with familial responsibilities - they are a stepping stone to bigger and better things. More often than not, only slackers who need to change jobs often (from one McDonalds to Wendies to Burger King) because they aren't doing a good job are the ones stuck at minimum wage. I'm not saying good people don't get stuck at minimum wage, I'm saying people make decisions and if they don't like their current positions they need to make better decisions - like taking that minimum wage job that has the potential to pay more in the future if you do good work, or taking the minimum wage job that might actually give you some worthwhile work experience.
Re:Add it to the list of apologies (Score:1, Interesting)
Just kidding. You're absolutely correct. We take ourselves far to seriously - and we create a lot of bad television.
Re:Near-shore is still off-shore (Score:3, Interesting)
See, this is where our Time of Troubles is going to start. REGARDLESS OF WHO WINS IN A WEEK, THE OTHER SIDE IS GOING TO SAY THAT THE WINNERS CHEATED AND WILL CALL FOR REVOLT. Think about that. We've brought this upon ourselves with our politics, our electioneering, and our untrackable unaccountable unreliable voting machines. Please, think before you act.
Re:Kerry in the senate... (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason is simple: only 2% of US employees earn the minimum wage. Most of that 2% is retail fast food workers. It is so low that the vast, vast majority of jobs have market-based prices higher than the minimum wage. It may have a deleterious effect on teenage unemployment, but not unemployment in general.
The "smart" politician will say to the public "Oh horrors, there must be a minimum wage hike so people aren't in poverty". What he means is "The market prices for 98% of jobs in this country went up, so raise the minimum wage just enough to make it look like I care, but won't actually lead to significantly higher unemployment."
Take this reasoning and apply it to China and India, both of which also have a minimum wage, though much, much smaller than that of the US). Their min wage t probably only affects a small part of their population as well (as many of the people in those country don't work for wages anyway but are subsistence farmers, and the ones who do tend to make more than them minimum wage).
Re:Kerry in the senate... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd looked at the bills he'd sponsored on the senate archive site to get a feel for what he'd done in the senate for the past 20 years. There were a lot of things introduced (but not nearly as many as other prominate senators, even going back to Gore). The substance looked thin on a lot of them but there were a few big ones. The other striking thing was the most of of the bills were co-sponsored by only Kennedy. The other senator's records I compared had a wider range of co-sponsors.
At the time I didn't go through and figure out which ones actually became laws. The fact the so few actually went anywhere is shocking. 20 years in the senate and 11 laws to show for it doesn't strike me as very productive. I'm going to have to go back and look at the other senators again to compare what they actually got passed into law.
Re:Guess this makes Canada... (Score:2, Interesting)
Would that be more or less embarrassing than when Dan Quayle was heading for Latin America and mentioned that he needed to brush up on his Latin?
Amusingly, even had he actually said it, it wouldn't actually be that bad of an idea. When we lived in Tucson (not far from the Mexican border), my father was actually the "go-to" guy for children who only spoke spainish when none of the doctors who actually spoke spainish were around.
He doesn't speak spainish, but he'd had years of Latin; however, he discovered that if you speak latin with a Mexican accent, even most kids can guess what you're trying to say, and by treating their spainish as badly accented Latin, he could fumble through what they were trying to say.
I can verify from my own experience that the same applies to Italian ^_^
Re:Guess this makes Canada... (Score:4, Interesting)
It can also improve one's English, since English has many words that derive from Latin.