Why the floodgates are open

[mcquiggd]

Firstly, I see the question of allowing mass migration from a country such as Chechnya, or Poland, into your home country as very relevant bearing in mind your arguements for mass economic immigration into my home country. The cultural differences need to be taken into account, as well as the economic impact. In fact it would probably have less impact, due to Russias land mass, although availability of adequate housing is probably far worse than here.

Secondly, I will not bet £100 that Viktor does not return to his home country and leave IT as he would be mad to do so. What I would hope is that he works to improve the quality of his own country, increase job prospects for his countrymen through innovation and become an entrepeneur, and then compete with me on a level playing field. Not take money and job prospects from my country, with my governments support.

[AtW]

Secondly, I will not bet £100 that Viktor does not return to his home country and leave IT as he would be mad to do so.

Ok, some progress here.

So, you agree he will still be in IT, who do you think he will work for with his UK experience on his CV? Of course he would be snapped up by a local outsourcing house who would be extremely happy to add to their sales pitch: we have people with experience working in the UK! In all probability he will greatly help them not only get sales, but also execute better, thus retaining clients there!

He will certainly take a few jobs with him to his own country, most likely over 5. I'd rather have him stay here since he proved he can actually work with British employers, plus he is not on benefits, sure ideal situation would have been for me to be the only contractor in the UK, but there is no ideal choice here - your choice that you offer is tactically beneficial, but strategically it is a major failure.

Yes I said outsourcing quality is crap, and I'd like it to be this way - but once you start kicking people like Viktor out then quality there will go up because the best people there immigrated, why the heck you want to force them back?

By the way Moscow is full of illegals working everywhere - mostly builders and all that stuff, it's like Mexicans in the USA, nobody likes them particularly well, but matter of fact is that locals would not pay twice as much for local workers who would drink lots, be lazy and stuff. This is not to say that UK IT people are drunkards or lazy, but competition is always good - those who don't have it become complacent and lost out long term.

[BarbarianAtTheDoor]

Programming is already globalised, so these reasons are moot. I think it's as close to a perfect market as markets get.

If anything, programmers moving westward increase the average pay of everyone in the market, including those already living in the developed world, since it would already be very easy to offshore those tasks there.

Protectionists do have a point about physical labour, though.

[Viktor]

Before I arrived in UK I had some talks with a Dutch company regarding outsourcing - they already had had an outsourcing shop in Romania, employing over 60 people. They wanted initially to move an outsourcing facility from Indonesia to Romania, mainly low level help desk support. I was supposed to offer them recruiting support and help in the set up of their business.
After several weeks and a couple of meetings they turned the problem to SAP development, Oracle support and high-level networking support, I explained that you can't pay peanuts if you want that kind of stuff, even if you are based in Romania - Romania is not Indonesia!!
After this I went to UK not to send money home, but to find better business prospects in a country well-known for encouraging self-initiative and entrepreneurship...
Anyway, now one of my friends who works for that company tells me that the wages have doubled, the Dutch company employs over 150 people in Romania and in Netherlands they have now only 50 workers, mainly sales...

[Buffoon]

Many here on work-permits are living in multiple occupancy subsidised housing, for example, employees of Indian outsourcing companies. Their whole cost base is different to UK workers who may have mortgages, student loans, etc. For many of those working here from overseas here are on an equal basis, but there is a substantial amount that is not.

Furthermore, when the whole of IT service provision is outsourced to overseas providers as is the case in many of the larger companies, then local people are not even in the running as staff are sourced from the outsourcing companies pool of workers back home.

Fair and open competition is indeed a very good thing as it keeps locals on their toes. However, we don’t have that as there are barriers to entry into the market and differences in the economies of local and overseas suppliers.

[mcquiggd]

Ok, some progress here.
So, you agree he will still be in IT, who do you think he will work for with his UK experience on his CV? Of course he would be snapped up by a local outsourcing house who would be extremely happy to add to their sales pitch: we have people with experience working in the UK! In all probability he will greatly help them not only get sales, but also execute better, thus retaining clients there!

In that scenario, allowing foreign workers free access to our market to gain experience should quite obvioulsy be stopped. In my scenario, I am happy to compete on skills, not with people who are here for the short term and therefore do not have the same burden as a UK worker. That has been stated here time and time again. None of us are scared of the 'skills' or competition of other countries, it is the swamping of our market, the impact on our country, and the attitude of the current government we do not want.

He will certainly take a few jobs with him to his own country, most likely over 5. I'd rather have him stay here since he proved he can actually work with British employers, plus he is not on benefits, sure ideal situation would have been for me to be the only contractor in the UK, but there is no ideal choice here - your choice that you offer is tactically beneficial, but strategically it is a major failure.

Again, that reinforces my previous point about allowing foreign workers to come to the UK in the short term, only to become potential competitors in the future.

However, you yourself agree that outsourcing is losing momentum. I would counter that the short term approach of allowing unfettered economic migration, which leaves a lasting impact on the 'target country', is the 'tactical success' for business that leads to the strategic failure for the country.

There is an entire industry in this country geared to educating foreign competitors. Universities fight over foreign students for money, wheras once they had a duty to educate the UK citizens who had helped create these institutions in the first place.

Yes I said outsourcing quality is crap, and I'd like it to be this way - but once you start kicking people like Viktor out then quality there will go up because the best people there immigrated, why the heck you want to force them back?

Because I would rather see someone from the UK doing the same job and gaining the experience, rather than claiming the dole. As mentioned elsewhere on this board, a significant number of people with skills are out of work / underemployed I believe the phrase was. So why are work permits still granted?

By the way Moscow is full of illegals working everywhere - mostly builders and all that stuff, it's like Mexicans in the USA, nobody likes them particularly well, but matter of fact is that locals would not pay twice as much for local workers who would drink lots, be lazy and stuff. This is not to say that UK IT people are drunkards or lazy, but competition is always good - those who don't have it become complacent and lost out long term.

So you recognise that other countries subject to the same immigration pressure also resent such an influx of economic migrants? You cite USA/ Mexico and Russia as examples, I simply cite the UK.

[AtW]

Rates for programming more than doubled in Moscow in the last 2 years alone, considering lack of income tax it means that $3000 paid there to reasonably senior programmer pretty close to £2k net I was earning here while being a permie, and say if I went back to Russia I'd certainly earn a lot more as a Project Manager with UK passport and good English language, CV etc than here, but of course I prefer to stay here as it's not about money for me, but if I was forced to leaven then I would probably have to join one of those shops and take a lot more than 1 job from here.

Understand one thing - IT people who come to work here are the risk takers, entreprenurs, with better knowledge of English and reasonable skills than those who stayed back - you gotto keep these people here because they are not the worst of the kind and kicking them out will cost you more.

So chill out and stop thinking about impact on your personal income.

[AtW]

Anyway mcquiggd, you are boring me now - I am not the kind of person I was few years ago when I would argue too much on the board, frankly I don't give a fck anymore if people are convinced by my words or not: I believe I am right and this is enough for me, time will be the judge, meanwhile I will focus on SKA.

[mcquiggd]

Understand one thing - IT people who come to work here are the risk takers, entreprenurs, with better knowledge of English and reasonable skills than those who stayed back - you gotto keep these people here because they are not the worst of the kind and kicking them out will cost you more.

So chill out and stop thinking about impact on your personal income.

Maybe ill borrow some of that weed youve been smoking Alexei

So we have how many thousands of these entrepeneurs in the country then..? My my, I didn't realise there were so many wanting to come here...

No, we have a small number of entrepeneurs, and a majority of people who want to take money, go home and live well. At least be honest about it.

And if you think that the people who come here are those 'with better knowledge of English and reasonable skills than those who stayed back', you obviously haven't worked with the larger projects where foreigne workers are involved, that in my personal experience have tended to be agressive, a burden on fellow workers due to asking questions every 30 minutes as to how a system works, and did not contribute in the slightest to the progress of a project, but where there purely because management saw them as a cost saving.

It also begs the question why we have increased funding for English Language Teaching for these amazingly talented entrepeneurs, when many of own children leave school functionaly illiterate.

[mcquiggd]

Anyway mcquiggd, you are boring me now - I am not the kind of person I was few years ago when I would argue too much on the board, frankly I don't give a fck anymore if people are convinced by my words or not: I believe I am right and this is enough for me, time will be the judge, meanwhile I will focus on SKA.

Ok, I am not convinced by your arguments, but I have no problem with you as an individual. You would, based on your efforts, be one of the 2000-3000 people a year I would say would benefit this country, but I do not subscribe to your advocation of mass economic migration being beneficial to the UK.