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I recently worked a two-month contract for a San Francisco-based clothing importer-retail chain. Though I'm U.S born and based, my contract was with a New Delhi-based temp agency who rented me out to a New Delhi-based IT consulting company, who rented me out to the U.S. end client.

Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the IT personnel were from India. (I'm not counting Americans of Indian origin, just visiting workers.) We were crammed together at long benches, little partitions separating the bench into a series of two-person 'micro-cubicles.' Between the influence of Indian wages and two entities raking off a cut of the pay before it got to me, I made the same rate as I did at the end of the last century.

Industry shills like to say this is not a problem and, "We need to be looking at the jobs for tomorrow." We DO need to look at the jobs for tomorrow, but we won't. We didn't in the 1990s. We (here meaning the U.S.) didn't act on the obvious future need for technology workers and make college for certain majors free, or even paid. Other countries did this--and now Indians and other nationals dominate U.S. technology jobs while U.S. literature and theater arts graduates work in Starbucks to pay off their massive student loans. No doubt many more might-have-been home-grown technology workers couldn't afford college at all, and now work in jobs far below their potential.

So whose fault is this state of affairs? It's not the Indians's; they're just reaping the rewards of the good planning that we like to talk about but don't act on. As Pogo said, "We have seen the enemy, and it is us." In a world where elected officials owed less to their campaign contributors, corporations would be allowed many fewer H1B1 visa workers, and would have incentives to train workers and provide college scholarships.

It's bad enough that we're in this state of affairs, but it's salt in the wound when corporate PR hacks try to tell us that up is down, green is red, and exporting jobs is good for us.