It appears as if companies heavily involved in the use of H1B visa holders to fill out their corporate staff have found a new way to press their case for relaxing H1B visa restrictions - threaten greater outsourcing if the number of visas are not increased.

Both sides of the debate are playing out on this one, with the Rand Corporation taking the position that greater restrictions on H1B's will cause more outsourcing and outsourcing opponents suggesting that corporations are talking out of two sides of their mouths.

Somehow, I doubt that it is coincidental that this debate is occurring in an election year. Instead, I think that we're seeing the interested parties trying to develop positions that sound good to their supporters, but are otherwise rather blank promises.

With unemployment rising in the U.S., finding trainable workers should become an important priority for companies. Any project that can be outsourced to Bangalore can also be outsourced to Birmingham - as long as the skill set is there. However, we also cannot fail to recognize the scalability, flexibility and enthusiasm of our offshore partners - and the fact that outsourcing offers benefits exceeding pure cost reduction.