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Thread 6966

Thread ID: 6966 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-05-28

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JAT [OP]

2003-05-28 06:06 | User Profile

**On May 13, The Contra Costa Times reported on an event that should trouble us all—the suicide of Kevin Flanagan, 41. (“Job losses sap morale of workers,” by Ellen Lee – elee@cctimes.com) Kevin was not a drug addict, a convict, or a ne’er-do-well; he was a trained computer programmer with years of experience whose job was sent overseas. The Contra Costa Times story reports that “led by the information-technology industry, 3.3 million service jobs and $136 billion in wages will move from the United States to such countries as India and Russia over the next decade or so.”

At the same time, the federal government is cooperating with hugely-profitable computer companies to relax H-1b visa restrictions, so thousands more programmers from India, Pakistan, and other impoverished countries can pour into the U.S.—to compete with American programmers like Kevin. In 2002, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman characterized H-1B visas as a “government subsidy program.”

A month ago, Kevin Flanagan found out that he’d be losing his job at the Bank of America’s Concord Technology Center. That same day, he took his life—in the parking lot of his former employer.

**

[url=http://www.vdare.org/letters/tl_052103.htm]http://www.vdare.org/letters/tl_052103.htm[/url]