The offshoring of high wage jobs from the United States to lower cost overseas locations is currently contributing to unprecedented levels of unemployment among American electrical, electronics and computer engineers. Offshoring also poses a very serious, long term challenge to the nation's leadership in technology and innovation, its economic prosperity, and its military and homeland security.
Prudent steps must be taken to ensure that offshoring, if it does occur, is implemented in ways that will benefit the United States and all its citizens, including high tech workers. To this end, IEEE-USA recommends that:
The Federal Government must collect and publish reliable statistics on the kinds and numbers of manufacturing and service jobs that are being moved offshore.
Government procurement rules should favor work done in the United States and should restrict the offshoring of work in any instance where there is not a clear long-term economic benefit to the nation or where the work supports technologies that are critical to our national economic or military security.
New U.S. workforce assistance programs should be created to help displaced high-tech workers regain productive employment and ensure that employed workers can acquire the knowledge and skills they need to remain competitive.
The H-1B and L-1 visa programs should be reformed and new trade agreements should incorporate such reforms. These temporary admissions programs for skilled workers are often used to import lower cost labor and can result in displacement of U.S. professionals, exploitation of foreign workers and accelerated offshoring of engineering and other high tech jobs.
A coordinated national strategy must be developed to sustain U.S. technological leadership and promote jobs creation in response to the concerted strategies being used by other countries to capture U.S. industries, jobs and markets.
Federal investments and tax credits for research and development should be limited to work performed in the U.S. R&D that must, by its nature and content, be carried out offshore, is not covered by our recommendation.
[from ieeeusa.org]