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Indian ex-pats in the Valley

A Silicon Valley executive believes things are a lot better for Indian ex-pats than when he first immigrated in the late 1960s.

Charles Cooper Former Executive Editor / News
Charles Cooper was an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet.
Charles Cooper

Received some interesting feedback on my last post. Several readers took me to task for mentioning the race issue, accusing me of searching out an issue that does not exist. Maybe, maybe not.

On Friday, I dropped by the offices of The Indus Entrepreneurs, which was hosting a press reception in advance of their big conference later this week. One of the folks I spoke with was Kanwal Rekhi, one of the big names in the Indian-American high-tech community. Rekhi is aware of the "Lou Dobbs" effect, but he nonetheless believes things are a lot better for Indian ex-pats than when he first immigrated in the late 1960s. Back then, Irwin Feerst tried to convince the IEEE to oppose the importation of immigrant engineers because of wage concerns. "Things are much different these days," he said.

Speaking of India, check out The New York Times piece "As a center for outsourcing, India could be losing its edge." The gist of the piece is that the good times in India have resulted--no surprise--in climbing wages and increasing staff turnover. If the trend holds, what does that mean for the future plans of U.S. companies looking to offshore work to the Indian tech lumpen proletariat?