Computer expert and science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has some thoughts on exporting jobs here

On the other hand, we do have a situation in which most of the profits from Free Trade fall to employers, but many of the costs fall on the general public.

Some of those costs are not purely economic although they certainly have economic repercussions. Social philosophers have for more than a century warned us of the dangers of wide spread anomie – that is, citizens with no ties to their community. No patriotism, no civic pride, and no reason other than fear of punishment to obey the laws. Telling half the population that it is unemployable – in effect useless – and can hope for nothing better than make work and the dole is not likely to make for a healthy republic.

Of course it has not been demonstrated that half the population really is useless. Note that Ricardo’s theory assumed a fair amount of freedom: labor would be free to seek employment and entrepreneurs would be free to offer employment. New businesses could start and succeed or go broke without excessive regulation. A businessman need understand only his own business; he need not be a tax expert and cognizent of myriad employment regulations. Alas, those conditions don’t prevail.Chaos Manor Reviews Column 320 Part 3, March 21, 2007

With a followup in his letter column here.

Tim Sullivan writes a the Associated Press:

There may be a lot of potential — Indian schools churn out 400,000 new engineers, the core of the high-tech industry, every year — but as few as 100,000 are actually ready to join the job world, experts say.

Instead, graduates are leaving universities that are mired in theory classes, and sometimes so poorly funded they don’t have computer labs. Even students from the best colleges can be dulled by cram schools and left without the most basic communication skills, according to industry leaders.

When I was working at HP, I was consistently hearing stories of folks who had never touched a computer until they got to the US.

India is great at producing paperwork-as Enron found out. There is a huge incentive to produce “engineers” with a bachelors degree(only when someone has a bachelors degree do they qualify for an H-1b visa)-and that exactly is what the Indian educational system is doing.

In the media pattern that follows a widely publicized immigrant crime or terrorist arrest, the protocol of editorial elites dictates that attention must to paid to the perp’s community members and their sensitive feelings concerning the dreaded — although largely imaginary — backlash against immigrants.

This being America, where citizens are largely fair and law-abiding, generalized retaliation almost never happens against the ethnic group du jour. But in Virginia Beach where two teenaged girls were recently killed by a drunk illegal alien, the media rushed to interview numerous Hispanics about their fears of mistreatment from the terrible Americans.

Because one Hispanic person is accused of causing a tragic accident, Monica Restrepo said, she now frets that many will be judged and be the brunt of insults.

“We’re very worried about what’s going to happen to all of us in the community,” said Restrepo, who owns the decade-old La Tapatia, believed to be one of the first Latin American grocery stores in the city.

Restrepo and other local Hispanics this week expressed their sympathy for the families of two Virginia Beach girls killed in a car crash March 30. But they also couldn’t mask their concern over a possible backlash against both legal and illegal immigrants.
[ Hispanics wary of fallout from deadly crash in Virginia Beach, Virginian Pilot 4/7/07]

Complaints continue at length even though there is not a single instance cited of rude epithets or insults, much less any physical affronts.

Even so, liberal media practice requires the recitation of the fears of immigrants, who are clearly willing participants, against their American neighbors — which is very insulting when you think about it.

But immigrant fear-of-backlash stories are formulaic and easy to write, so we will surely see more of them.