Made in America

[Swingman]

Yep, we do ... and mine is called the "Construction Industry", which was the subject of the conversation.

[CW]

True, but now is the time to get ready for when it returns.

I'm not se what you mean about the taxes. In this area, most of the tradesmen are US taxpaying citizens. Many are not working as often as they should because building is slow, but the ones that are, pay taxes, buy goods and services. Yes, they do buy flat screen TV's and send that money outside, but they buy American pickup trucks too. ==================================================================

Around here, the majority of "carpenters" are Mexican illegals with a few Americans thrown in to keep an eye on them.

[-MIKE-]

Nashville recently replaced its perfectly acceptable convention center with a new convention center. One of the reasons used to con taxpayers into paying for it was all the jobs it would create.

It was discovered that the General Contractor was paying off an INS informant when, on a day of a planned surprise inspection by the INS,

80% of the workers just happened to call in sick. One worker on site that day called a local radio program and expressed that it was the only day he could do his job without an interpreter.

[CW]

Isn't it possible that most of the foreign labour you refer to is as a result of Texas' proximity to Mexico? Maybe the further north one heads in the US, that foreign labour decreases dramatically? Am I wrong for thinking that?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yep. I live in Washington. We're infested to.

[krw]

...and *horrors* Germany, France, and Japan! I wonder just that 'I' stands for, anyway.

[Dave]

On Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:03:44 -0500, " [e-mail]"

I honestly can't remember any support jobs being farmed out to those countries. Think the price of admission was too high. The department I worked in handled the entire US support for ThinkPad laptops. Definitely a very demanding customer base. This was in 1997.

Being a Canadian, I can remember getting several almost derogatory comments from US customers about my "New York" accent. I wonder what kind of comments were passed out when support went first to Ireland, and then horrors, India. I would have liked to sit in on a few of those calls.

[tiredofspam]

[Rich]

Guess their dream came true. It truly is a Global Economy... Ugh!

[krw]

Support? I was talking about *design* jobs. Thousands of them.

Interestingly, ThinkPad service and support is in Atlanta, even though Lenovo bought the line seven or eight years ago. They still use the IBM call center.

I always got Southern accents (Atlanta). I just replaced my wife's ThinkPad and it certainly wasn't a Bangalore accent. ;-)

[Dave]

On Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:27:59 -0500, " [e-mail]"

Entirely possible. My IBM experience was 1997-1999. After that exposure, I considered employment where among other things, out of the country outsourcing was unlikely. That was one reason why I went into technical writing. Unlikely I'd ever get outsourced. Language work is one of the few bastions of protection that rarely go out of country or province for that matter.

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------- Used to tell the the tech writers to take their finished piece home and have some non tech person read it.

If they understood it, they were done.

If they didn't, back to the drawing board.

Lew

[Dave]

On Sun, 4 Dec 2011 22:17:14 -0800, "Lew Hodgett"

Good advise. The biggest problem I had tech writing was butting heads with the tech professionals. A sizeable portion of them couldn't understand why it was so important that their writing had to be perfect when writing for non tech people. They just couldn't (or wouldn't) realize that not having good English writing skills caused them to be taken less seriously. The ones that did realize it were usually the ones that hired me. Hell, immigrant or not, they were all smarter than me, there just happened to be one thing I could do better than them.

[HeyBub]

I think they're everywhere.

Aside: While thinking of a border fence to secure everything, there is one problem I haven't heard addressed: Two-thirds of the border, over 1,200 miles, is a freakin' RIVER (the Rio Grande). Do you put the fence in the middle of the river, or what?

"No, dummy, you put it on the U.S. side of the river," some would say.

Well, aside from a swatch of the river adjacent to Big Bend National Park, the rest of the land adjoining the river is private property. Ranchers depend on access to the water for their cattle and crops.

I don't believe our betters in Washington even want to think about it.

[willshak]

Doug Winterburn wrote the following:

Thanks. I reposted this and Nova's PDF link reply to alt.building.construction

[Doug Winterburn]

sharks?

piranhas?

They have plenty of those in D. C.

[Doug Miller]

Deputize the ranchers to enforce the law?

[Rich]

"Our betters?" Hmmm I have to take umbrage with that statement.

[krw]

I bought my first (personal) ThinkPad in '05. Support was in Atlanta then. I dealt with them, through IBM, in your timeframe, also. May have been corporate customers only, though.

I'm still in doing design stuff, but (was) retired from IBM five years ago.

32+ years in IBM and I've just started my third job, in three industries, in four years. ;-)

[krw]

Mines. Much cheaper than fences and works on land and in the water.