Outsourcing can go both ways, Part II

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Hello! And Hej! to you, Henri. It’s great to be back.

So, last week Justin mentioned that Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper is looking to outsource some copy editing to the U.S. Foreigners? Hiring Americans? As my colleague Coco Masters recently reported, they’re after our pilots, too.

In a slightly different sort of turn-about, I recently went to apply for a visa to travel to India, and was faced with this message on the Indian consulate’s web site:

Indian Visa Services Outsourced

With effect from October 01, 2007, visa applicants are requested to obtain visas through:
Travisa Outsourcing, Inc. (All queries relating to Indian visa services should be directed to them)

Travisa is a U.S. company—they’ve been in the visa and passport expediting business for years. The Indian embassy decided to bring in a heavyweight after being overwhelmed by the surging number of visa applications in recent years.

Earlier today I went to Travisa’s web site, and, as it turns out, they’re hiring! In New York, San Francisco and Washington DC. That means you can now get a job in the U.S. to do work that Indians have decided not to do themselves. This globalization stuff keeps getting more and more dizzying.