Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Immigration vs. Outsourcing

Everyone with a pulse in the US is probably aware of the whole immigration debate going on here right now. (If not, the link is the Googled “immigration debate”. There’s only about 60 million sites that can fill you in.)

And for years we’ve been hearing complaints about jobs going overseas due to outsourcing. Dilbert is dealing with that in his usual humorous way today. Apparently even some Christian prayer lines have been outsourced to India.

So what’s your opinion? Are the two issues related in any way?

Speak up and leave a comment.

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2 comments:

Dave Carrol said...

I don't know about the states, but growing up in Canada, we learned that Canada is a "CULTURAL MOSAIC" and America is the "MELTING POT" (Is this just a hoser thing??)

Anyway, it's not as big of an issue in Canada. It's still there, but not as much seemingly. It's got it's pluses and minus's. I think that people are afraid of loosing cultural identity, when what it really does is just change cultural identity a little. But the other side of coin is that it's not sowing into your own people.

I just find it dangerous when anyone starts thinking in terms of "us" and "them". None of us are perfered customers in God's Kingdom and when arguments begin to use "...well we need to take care of us first...", I think it can lead to an unhealthy perspective on the world.

Two cents from the Great White (over 100 degrees btw) North

Chris Cree said...

I appreciate your point on the "us" and "them" issue.

Would you then still differentiate between citizen and non-citizen? How about law abiding legal immigrants versus law breaking illegal immigrants?

Are some categories still useful in spite of their “us” and “them” nature?

Or should we get over any feelings of national identity we might foster, ignore national borders and all become citizens of some United Nations like global government?

And how does that play into the whole outsourcing of jobs to places like India and the Far East? The primary argument I’ve heard for most of the amnesty ideas is that the vast majority of the illegal immigrants are doing work that most Americans simply don’t want to do.

Does that line of reasoning still work if technology is allowing many of those same tedious jobs to emigrate overseas anyway?

Is it really over 100 degrees up there? Holy Smokes! That's hotter than down here in the Deep South today! (Only 88 right now, which is hot enough, I'm here to tell you.)