It appears that the Obama Administration is funding IT training in
Sri Lanka, specifically to help them in landing outsourcing contracts
from the U.S., to the tune of $22 million. The training will include
programming in Java EE, as well as teaching skills in business process
outsourcing, call center support, and English language proficiency.

This certainly adds to The One’s previous, well-documented
efforts at slowing down or reducing IT outsourcing. < sarcasm off > This
funding of direct competition for U.S. technical workers puts the lie
to all he has said about reducing “off-shoring” or “best shoring”, and
the bashing of the previous administration for creating tax incentives
for moving jobs overseas. This training will facilitate more movement
of tech jobs offshore.

You can read the full article here (in Information Week). (By the way,
the comments are entertaining…)

The funding is through USAID (United States Agency for International
Development), headed by Czar Rajiv Shah, and coming through this agency,
the money cannot be used domestically. But this begs the question: why
in the world are we (our own government!) training foreigners to take
jobs from us? We have approximately 10% official unemployment (maybe
more than 20% real unemployment) in this country! Perhaps those funds
(even the piddling amount of $22 million) could be put to better use here
at home… or, heaven forbid, perhaps we could even cut taxes a bit?

Why, in the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great
Depression, we are continuing to send our tax money out of the country,
is beyond me. Just one more reason to think seriously about your vote
in the upcoming fall elections…