The opportunities over there would have to be brighter than here but I'm sure local "hopefuls" would have to jump over the mountain of Indians that flood into the US every day.

Dear Editor,

Having looked at this forum for a while, I think it has quite some potential.

This last article is a change (for the better) in the last majority of articles published.

I think it would be good to address Australian IT from a positive angle rather than tickle the thoughts of a lot of your readers in such a way that we end up (pfff again) with posts containing similar gestures like "Agencies are bad", "the government is doing a bad job because everything is outsourced" and all the rest of it.

Congrats on this last post, and keep a positive mood angle on the IT address in this beautiful country. We all get a tired of pointing fingers and name calling excersises, which apparently some of the articles do provoke.

Good luck.

Whilst I'm sure that Australians who go to the US under this scheme will integrate quickly, it's a bit fishy that they have just suddenly done this.

I've noticed that the "American Dream" has disappeared as a phrase out of the US media. Perhaps others have found that it does not really exist. It is a country up to its eyeballs in debt and mired in military conflict.

So Australians stealing US jobs is ok, but Indians stealing Australian jobs isn't? This is about commoditizing and undermining the American IT workforce in the same way IT people here have been undermined. Wake up and smell the hypocrisy.

Actually I don't think this is good, we should try to retain our good people, avoid a brain drain, and try do some more things here.

I don't know what to make of this bit of news. IT in America is busily migrating jobs to ... India, Malaysia, and even Australia. By the time you get here, the job might be "over there" ...

Where ever they are offshored to or from the bottom line is it is a global market and we are global workers. We need to flexible and or mobile to go where the work is or attract it to where we are.

"Where ever they are offshored to or from the bottom line is it is a global market and we are global workers. We need to flexible and or mobile to go where the work is or attract it to where we are."-Un/Underemployed.

Exactly.

In short, be like the Indians.

Where's Tony, I wonder? I'm just waiting for him to come charging in on this in his usual Don Quixote style.

> Be like the Indians

India is a big place and there you go generalising again.

Do you have industry experience?

We can't be like the Indian's, we don't have the population density.

Adding to this, it is impossible in Australia to drum up money to start a company. And your offshore spruiking is not helping.

I believe Australia should, at least, be doing as half as much as what places like Israel or Sweden have done in ICT.

Dunno-Australia has an FTA in place with the US, which now allows Australian IT companies to bid for US federal and state government contracts without hindrance, and now this recent annoncement of 10000+ work visas exclusively for Aussies.

Yet you complain about how difficult it is to raise money here.Have you heard about global mobility of money, and that you no longer need to restrict your search for capital to your home country?

Twenty years ago, when the big Indian IT outsourcers started out, do you think it would have been easy to raise money in India? Yet they did it, and without the benefit of an FTA or preferential treatment for work visas.

The point I'm trying to make here is that its time to shed the negative "branch office" mindset that keeps us a small economy. Our domestic market is not big enough to sustain an independant IT industry, especially in a situation where we're mostly doing low end work like programming.

The Australian IT industry has to think global, and the best way to begin is by leveraging the US-Aus FTA to our benefit.

And there's no shame in learning from the Indians about how to move in quickly on an opportunity.

And BTW, I have over two decades of industry experience.

We may get along yet!

CD, I wish the global movement of money were so in Australia.

For example, the "Unwired" ISP has raised anti-competitive allegations against Telstra regarding the fact that if they were to setup wireless internet infrastructure in the bush, then Telstra would soon step in and undercut them, off-course in that particular region only.

However, if Unwired could, they would go on a big cash hunt, then take Telstra head on with massive installations around the country. Telstra wouldn't be able to install RIM's intime and would have to eventually fold on it.

For example, Hutchinson's Telcom, if anyone has gone to Hong Kong, they would know how much cash the company has, when it came around to installing a 3G network, Telstra quickly folded and bought 3g of them for a high price.

why not head to America? Because the I.T industry there is crap.. I've looked, my current job over in the US pays $25/hr abouts, but I get $60/hr here... not quite worth the move. Plus I don't want to live in America anyway... why do you think they all want to come here?

So has anyone found an actual proven methodology to utilising the E3 visas? is there a list of NY (Manhattan) companies who are aware of this visa and will to give aussies an opportunity to work there? I have experience in Marketing IT but finding it impossible for any work in NYC.

try these guys (CXC). Aussie owned and have a US presence (I think they are in Seattle and NY but cover all 50 states). Assist with E3 sponsorship, LAFHA and job assistance through their US affiliates. Have contacts on the ground in Aus as well.

E-3 sponsorship and job assistance.