Offshoring & Immigration Broadening the Job Market for India
In a recent article by Barrie McKenna for globeandmail.com, the columnist describes the popular Indian novel One Night @ the Call Center and its plot revolving around the “obnoxious American customer who makes the lives of the Delhi phone operators miserable.”
McKenna goes on to say, “it’s a refreshing flip side to the Western caricature of the Indian call center worker as a job-stealer with a fake English name and tenuous grasp of the language.” The columnist poses the question of who the true victims in this situation are, and states his conclusion that, “Bollywood’s portrait may not be far off the mark.”
Despite his Canadian descent, McKenna’s opinion represents a possible shift in the original hostility of North Americans towards offshoring and the increased presence of foreign workers in their nation’s job market. This should come as good news to Indian citizens, who may encounter less interference when looking to take advantage of employment opportunities abroad.
Additionally, a new report from the technology firm Forrester suggests that China’s plan to oppose India as a major competitor in the offshore industry hasn’t panned out. The country’s presence in the offshoring market has remained somewhat stagnant, with experts verifying that China has a long way to go before it is considered a “key challenger to India for offshore supremacy.”
So it looks as though India remains dominant in the offshoring business, with some conceding that the practice may not be hurting the U.S. workforce as much as it was originally thought.
For those Indians uninterested in the prospect of the offshoring market and the reduced compensation that foreign workers receive, some U.S. states are looking to increase immigration to supplement projected job vacancies in the future. California predicts a steady increase in skilled jobs that require college-educated employees, and is hoping that an influx of international workers will help to fill the positions.
Educated foreign workers have gravitated towards California in the past, with one article on the California Progress Report site stating that: “the population of immigrants with college degrees has grown almost thirty-fold since 1960, and foreign-born residents now make up 31 percent of all California’s college graduates ages 25 to 64. Recent immigrants are also among the best educated ever to arrive in California: One-third of those who came between 2000 and 2005 had college degrees.”
Thus, for citizens of India interested in U.S.-related jobs, opportunities appear to exist both inside and outside of their home country.