h1b facts once again

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

Federico Lucifredi writes:
|
|     -There are 3.8 million Americans working abroad. Conversely, there are
| about 250.000 H1bs and as many L1s according to a recent Business Week
| article. That is less than 0.1% of the number of people living in the
| continental US for each visa category.

Yeah, and in an attempt to get somewhat back on topic,  I'll  mention
that  for  the past year or so I've been working for a small software
firm whose main client is a big European company.  Which one  doesn't
matter;  what's  interesting is that our job is to wean them of their
dependence on software controlled by  a  big  American  firm.   We're
moving  them  to  a  networked collection of linux servers.  The main
pitch that got us this job was the idea  that  by  using  open-source
software  for  the  underlying  system,  they would no longer have to
depend  on  a  big  American  corporation  that  doesn't  have  their
interests at heart.

Our team of about 15 people does have two foreigners, though  one  of
them  is  Canadian, so she hardly qualifies as foreign.  The other is
Indian, and frankly, he's a quite competent fellow; I'd hate  to  see
him hurt by all this H1B fuss.  In any case, it's not obvious how our
working for a European company is materially different from an Indian
company working for an American company.

We have had a few jokes about their hiring a  gang  of  Americans  to
free  them from the bonds of another American company.  Of course, we
just tell them that we understand their problems all too well,  since
it's just as big a problem here.

I once tried making a joke about how we're using RedHat,  and  that's
another  American  corporation.   But I think that was stretching the
joke a bit too far, and we couldn't find  a  way  to  make  it  sound
really humorous.

In any case, there is a bit of irony about an anti-foreigner attitude
in a linux discussion group. I'd think a better approach for us would
be to make alliances with the people  adopting  open-source  software
around the world. One of our main selling points is independence from
powerful interests, and the ability to give people control over their
own  computers.   This is what got me the job I'm working on now, and
it's probably a lot of the future of open-source software.