[Mr. Jeeves]

“Excel and VBScript programming” — huh? That’s not programming.....

No, but a large number of our unemployed "IT professionals" have most of their experience in older software like VBScript or NT 4.0 systems administration or NetWare or COBOL. Even for smart people, it gets hard to keep up after age 40 without constant study outside of work hours - and employers are well aware of that. That's why the prospect of an unending supply of smart, cheap, 25-year-old Indians remains so enticing.

[ravager]

As long as there is steady supply young English speaking Indians with some basic skills in programming (.Net, Java, Oracle), business will always find a way to utilize their skill. There is no point screaming and yelling all that nonsense....”Indians are mediocre in quality” ....”they are cheap”....”they cant speak English”....”Americans are much better”.
First of all project managers and employers hiring them don't buy such nonsense and secondly no one really needs a super intelligent programming whizkid with decades of experience (because that doesn't count in this field). Any young professional with some intermediate skill in any of the latest technology can very well get the job done. Building a software application isn't really rocket science anymore. No employer in this economy is going to pay top dollar for a software programmer when there are millions of readily available resources from overseas.

[ravager]

This is like a ritual that happens every 4 years during election time. Every 4 years during the run up to the election, the media and politicians rediscover their favorite whipping boy..... H-1B work visa. Every Indian knows.... come election time, it will be India bashing season again when they all start spewing venom on H1-B workers .....even though everyone knows US just cannot do without them. The industry wont let that happen. But hey India bashing makes astute politics. Who doesn't like paying overrated American grads a ridiculous $150 grands with full benefits for writing a piece of code while their jobs are protected by unions. Maybe then the IT industry might start doing as good as the automobile or the finance industry....oh nevermind.

[Cronos]

COBOL is still very useful and used in quite a few places in big firms. Ditto MVS, JCL and other such mf skills