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June 27, 2005
Labor ebbs and flows like the tide
This was going to be a comment (in response to my very first legitimate comment -- hey Jon!) but flow of labor is a subject I'm very interested in, so I thought I'd put it up front and center.
In his comment Jon said:
Talking to a friend of mine who has recently moved here from India, his impression is that the Indian Government is making it hard for Americans to move to India in retaliation against our restrictions on Indian's trying to get into the US.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was absolutely true. Indeed, I know that it's the reason it is difficult for American's to get visas in just about any other country is due in no small part to American attitudes towards allowing foreigners to work here. That, though, is really only part of the story.
Most visa requirements between nations are determined bilaterally or unilaterally. The EU is an obvious exception to this, at least when it comes to other EU nations. As a non-EU citizen, though, try getting a work visa in England. If you're Canadian it's no problem at all. Show up with an American passport, though, and you're out of luck. We'd have the same deal in the US if we hadn't decided to throw off the shackles of taxation without representation via bloody insurrection. But we did, and so now we can only see Big Ben on a tourist visa. If we wanted to go work in New Zealand, however, there are a fair number of opportunities that even we Americans can take advantage of.
For countries with tighter immigration policies, however, the easiest way in has always been to be sponsored by a company. In England this is relatively easy to do if you have a technical background, for example, or if you're in finance. I expect that, over time, we will see more of that sort of thing happen in India. You won't be able to just walk down to the Indian consulate and apply for a work visa, but you will be able to submit an application to a company located in Bangalore. Technical companies that need English speakers will eventually come to realize that it can be easier to fill labor gaps by importing workers than by training from the ground up. That's just the market at work.
Posted by matt at June 27, 2005 10:27 AM