Monday, May 24, 2010

What is the word for bringing in cheaper foreign labor to fill domestic jobs?

I have been using the word "insourcing" to refer to the practice of bringing in cheaper foreign labor to fill domestic jobs, such as with the H1-B visa program or with the hiring of illegal immigrants. That seems like an appropriate word since it is effectively the same thing as "oursourcing" (or more accurately "offshoring"), but in reverse. However, a check of online dictionaries and encyclopedias indicates that this is not the proper use of the word "insourcing". Thus, I'm wondering if there is a more appropriate word to describe the phenomenon that I describe?

What is the word for bringing in cheaper foreign labor to fill domestic jobs?
Indentured servitude
Reply:Unscrupulous.
Reply:It's called "illegal"
Reply:A good question that is eloquently posed; but I do not think that such a word exists yet. It takes a while for common phenomena to be reduced to a single word. It took 200 years for capital to be generalized as capitalism; but they didn't have the net in those days. Invent a word. Use it often, and if people like it enough, it will appear in Webster. That's how all the other words got there.


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