Computerworld - Gerald Cohen, the outspoken founder and CEO of New York-based business intelligence software vendor Information Builders Inc., spoke with Computerworld on Friday about the controversy surrounding offshore outsourcing and the H-1B visa cap. Excerpts from that interview follow:
Bill Gates told an audience in Washington a few days ago that the U.S. needs to get rid of the cap on H-1B visas (see story). What's your position on that? He's full of it. He says, "I'd hire a lot more American engineers if I could find them -- they're not available, and that's why we're going to China and India." He's full of it. He's going there because it's just cheaper. He can find all the engineers he wants in this country.
A lot of CEOs of companies like yours are saying they just can't find the people, so they're lobbying Congress to get rid of the H-1B visa cap. That's bulls---. A couple years ago that was true, and that's when the cap was raised. You know who wants [to get rid of the cap]? The Indian companies. The way the Indian companies work is they have to have a certain number of people here, and a lot more people back there -- so they're the ones who want to get all these people in. And they don't even pay them American wages -- they just pay them as cheaply as they can.
I'm the chairman of the New York Software Industry Association. One of the programs we have is a federal government program that gives the city of New York money to run technical training courses for people in the city to upgrade their skills, so city companies don't have to go overseas [for workers]. The program is essentially an H-1B replacement program.
But surely you use overseas labor to lower your own costs. I'm going to put two hats on. With one hat -- my [Software Industry Association] hat -- I say we want to keep jobs in New York City. The other hat says we want the company to be prosperous, and if I can lower my costs by doing work overseas, the company's more prosperous. But I'm not so sure that's better for the country.
I think a certain amount of tariff protection protects native industries. If it was product, we have a mechanism -- we put a tariff on it, and we've used that for years. It's a well-accepted idea. In fact, most of the guys [overseas] we're buying from have restrictive tariffs --
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