A reader sent me an email asking what legislation I would write to stop offshoring if I were in Congress. Off the top of my head, here are some reasonable bills I would introduce to address the offshoring threat:
- Banning or severely limiting federal, state, and local government contracts that are allowed to be handled by offshore workers.
- Prohibiting work that involves sensitive data (such as your SSN, medical records) from going offshore
- Tax penalties for hiring offshore employees, or tax benefits for hiring Americans
- Limiting/decreasing the quota for H1B (and similar) visas
I just read an article that talks about the threat that offshoring poses to the American chemical industry. Madeleine Jacobs, the executive director of the American Chemical Society, has a quote in the article that expresses the hypocrisy of business executives when it comes to offshoring.
"We are sending a very mixed message" to students when chemists and engineers are needed by the nation to remain innovative and competitive, yet companies "are laying off hundreds ... of those professionals," said Madeleine Jacobs, executive director of the American Chemical Society, on Monday. She is scheduled to speak today at a Pittsburgh Chemical Day program at the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers, Downtown.
"(Companies) are outsourcing the research and development at the same time they're saying, 'We don't have enough talent,' " Jacobs said. Those jobs are being shipped to China, India and Singapore, said Jacobs, whose Washington, D.C.-based society represents about 158,000 chemists and chemical engineers.
Sending those good-paying jobs overseas will discourage students from entering the chemistry and engineering fields at a time when "China and India are turning out scientists and engineers left and right," Jacobs said.
