If you're a baby boomer like I am, you probably get at least onee-mail a week from someone who wants to remind you of how great itwas in the "good old days" of 5-cent cokes, 29-cent gasoline andsafe neighborhoods in which to frolic. Ah, yes, those were halcyondays! But like all good things, they have come to an end, even inthe most stable of industries--insurance.

As technology has become increasingly critical to the insurancebusiness, this once happy and sleepy industry has beenunceremoniously booted out of the Land of Oz.

With a splash of cold water to the face, insurance has awakenedto find itself not in Auntie Em's cozy bedroom, but instead adrifton the often stormy seas of the technology business.

Gone are the days when insurance was a technology fiefdomreserved exclusively for those few software vendors who chose tospecialize in what had been a mind-numbingly bland and often arcanebusiness.

One has only to consider the increasing activity in theinsurance space of high-profile software makers such as Microsoft,Oracle and SAP to realize that mainstream software has entered thisindustry in a major way.

As a result, where insurance was once insulated from thevicissitudes of the often chaotic software market, insurers andbrokers now find themselves very much concerned with what the bigplayers are doing.

<< Vista Said to be Most Secure | Main

That brings me to a recent article in Computerworld that quotesa software group representative as saying that immigration reformwill be required in order for the tech industry to continue itsstrong economic performance in the United States.

According to a spokesperson for the Software and InformationIndustry Association, not being able to add more tech workers fromoutside our borders as needed creates an incentive for the industryto establish facilities outside the United States.

The obvious inference is that unless we bring in more techspecialists from abroad to populate software companies here, thecompanies will simply move their operations offshore--leaving moreAmerican workers searching for good, high-paying technicaljobs.

That seems to make sense, but when you think about it, thisentire line of reasoning is based on a false premise--that skilledand talented workers cannot be found and/or developed here in theUnited States.

Does anyone really believe that American workers cannot handlethe jobs that need to be done? Absolutely not! Does anyoneseriously think that American schools and companies are incapableof training people to do these jobs? I have never heard anyone sayso.

No. What is really at issue here begins and ends with thealmighty dollar (which isn't all that mighty these days). TheSoftware and Information Industry Association says the averageannual wage in the software industry in 2006 was$75,400--apparently significantly above the average wage for allworkers in the private sector.

That sounds fine, but if we bring in someone from overseas, theymight be willing to work for considerably less than an Americanworker would want. So there's a savings built in for Americansoftware makers.

And if those foreign workers get wise and demand equaltreatment, the companies can always pull up stakes and move abroadto find cheaper labor.

It's true that in recent years, U.S. college graduates have notbeen gravitating to computer science, but that shouldn't stop thetechnology industry from offering incentives for America'sbrightest to enter the field.

Especially in specialized areas of technology, such as insuranceand financial services, you would think that American companieswould want to recruit and train young people who could flourish inthe U.S. software industry and other technology arenas.

The problem is that it's just too easy--and much lessexpensive--for software vendors to hire foreign workers, or to movethe entire operation offshore to gain even more financialleverage.

That leaves U.S. workers who want to be part of the softwareindustry out in the cold.

In these times of looming recession, however, can we afford tobe so greedy that we shove our own workers aside in the name ofhigher profits for the corporation?

Let's offer incentives to our own students and train more ofthem for roles in the software and technology industry.

We need to take care of business inside our own borders beforewe worry about the global economy.

The alternative? Click the heels of your ruby slippers togetherthree times and keep repeating: "There's no place like home.There's no place like home. There's no place like home."