U.S. industry has for decades cut the cost of software development by hiring H1B immigrants that come to this country to work or come to get an education and remained here to work. Best known are the immigrants from India that are dominant on shore and off shore at providing software development services. Today some emerging markets that are competing in the IT outsourcing market are following that model and opening their door to technical professionals outside their borders with invitations to come and work.
The U.S. has made it relatively easy for the top minds in technology to migrate here and work. The current U.S. immigration law allows for 65,000 aliens to be issued a visa or otherwise provided H-1B status each fiscal year (FY). Laws exempt up to 20,000 foreign nationals holding a master’s or higher degree from U.S. universities from the cap on H-1B visas. In addition, excluded from the ceiling are all H-1B non-immigrants who work at (but not necessarily for) universities and non-profit research facilities.[1] This means that contractors working at, but not directly employed by the institutions may be exempt from the cap. Free Trade Agreements carve out 1,400 for Chilean nationals and 5,400 for Singapore nationals. Thus significantly more H-1B visas than the numerical cap are issued each year, with 117,409 in 2010.[2]
So what does this have to do with nearshore outsourcing in South and Central America? The U.S. market is looking closer at nearshore outsourcing as a way to relieve time zone issues and to enable collaborative work using Agile and Scrum type methodologies for faster delivery and a few LATAM countries are stepping up to the challenge. Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, and Brazil quickly come to mind. However, in the case of the first three, these are small countries with limited technical resources.
Emerging markets are going to need technology professionals to support their development. As industries develop and government entities expand their social roles, technology services become more and more in demand. Most of these countries have a skewed distribution of wealth and as such many citizens have a limited access to a good education. The future development of these countries is going to be governed by their access to technology and professionals that have the skills to implement it. If multi-national corporations acquire most of the limited skilled work force, you can be sure that will cause problem for domestic companies and government projects.
Here is one version of the future that is not very hard to imagine. As global corporations struggle to find skilled technical resources and increase their demand, skilled young professionals in places like Columbia, Guatemala, and Hondurans will start being identified as resources. However due to historical negative images, these companies will choose to move the professionals that they find to more historically acceptable locations like Costa Rica, rather than opening a branch office in a riskier country. Programmer salaries are about the same ever where throughout the region except Panama. For the developer, an opportunity to live in a safer country with a similar wage is often an easy choice. If you are not safe at home, money has little value. Plus we are talking about a small area of the world that shares a Latin culture and it is easy to travel from country to country on visits back home.
Vision TRE is currently recruiting English speaking senior ASP.Net developers and Classic ASP developers to relocate from any place in Central or South America to Costa Rica to support our projects because of the growing outsourcing industry there. If you have the skills and are interested in this opportunity send your resume to recruiter@visiontre.com. English speaking technical professional with other types of software development of system support skills are encouraged to also send us your resume to be considered for future opportunities.
