As American workers find their jobs falling by the wayside, IBM has proposed a pitch to relocate Americans from domestic sites to developing markets. In order to entice workers to seek employment in India IBM gushes : The climate is warm, there’s no shortage of exotic food and the cost of living is rock bottom.

What IBM fails to mention in its travel brochure is that while the company snips and cuts its U.S. based workforce, it ranks as the eighth largest user of foreign technology workers hired through H-1B visas.

As IBM ushers in foreign workers at the expense of their American counterparts, they are asking American workers to uproot their lives as a trade-off. The program, Project Match, moves workers who have been laid off from domestic sites and helps them obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which IBM has openings.

“IBM is not only offshoring IBM U.S. jobs but they want employees to offshore themselves through Project Match,” said a spokesman for Alliance@IBM, a workers’ group that’s affiliated with the Communications Workers of America but which does not have official union status at IBM.

Alliance@IBM says that IBM has laid off more than 4,800 people since January, including 1,449 in Sales and Distribution, 1,419 in the IBM software group, 1,200 in IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, 307 in IBM Finance, 193 in IBM Research, and 92 in human resources.

IBM should be focusing on keeping American jobs in the U.S. as opposed to creating more opportunities for American workers abroad. However, IBM is not entirely at fault. American policies have facilitated the demise of the American economy. Through the implementation of H-1B visas, we have created a climate in which it is not only legal but also more cost effective to take advantage of H-1B visas and displace American workers. The H-1B visa allows companies to hire foreign workers with lower salary demands and higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs that American workers would be considered overqualified.

The H-1B visa program was developed under the guise that foreign workers would only be brought in if there were not qualified candidates to fill available slots. Yet the H-1B visa program does not require employers to seek local talent before recruiting abroad for U.S. job openings. The Department of Labor’s strategic plan for Fiscal Years 2006-2011 states that “H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of a foreign worker.”

Our government needs to create incentives for American companies to stay in the U.S. and penalize those that ooutsource. We cannot allow companies to endorse utterly absurd programs like Project Match.

Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley have proposed the “Employ American Workers Act” which would require any bailed-out bank using Trouble Asset Relief Funds to only hire American workers for one year. EconomyInCrisis.org urges you to contact your senators and let them know you support this legislation. While this is a good start, we also need to let our senators know that policies prohibiting the use of H-1B visas, as they currently stand, should be expanded to other industries. Or else we may soon witness a mass exodus of American workers to the warm climates IBM so fervently endorses.

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