Thanks Andrew, wasn't aware of this!

India has long had a command economy and those few who get government jobs enjoy a great deal of perks which can be worth several times the base salary.

Despite the number of people without work who eke out a living in the informal economy, it takes Indians many more days to load ships, for example, which hurts India's export industries.

To get around this unionized work environment, the Indians have obviously hired itinerant Chinese who don't enjoy labor protections in their own country and are just interested in an $$$ salary they can send home.

This sounds a lot like an American oil services compound in an oil country. A lot of amenities that aren't avalable on the economy and much higher wages than at home. I wonder if the Chinese get a tax break, too.

Isn't this standard operating procedure for lots of construction projects around the world? The Chinese workers are not just temporary workers, they are temporary workers who will almost certainly not wish to stay when this one particular job is done. And even the "unskilled" workers on the site have one key skill: they speak the same language as the skilled workers.

Isn't that what blogging is? After all, Mr. Leonard probably commands a higher salary than the unnamed author of the investigation for India's "Outlook" which he picked up from a secondary source (CDT) - they even wrote opening paragraphs he aspires to.

Perhaps Salon should stop allowing its bloggers to profit off the derivative use of the work and creativity of others and merely have editors who choose to pay for first source foreign journalism.

Schadenfreude? More like living in glass houses with a bowl of stones.

I'm not so sure i would put our dear HTWW author at the high end of the journalistic pay scale....

Africans have been howling about this for years with infrastructure projects the Chinese are building in exchange for exclusive mineral rights - all the plum, and crucial, jobs are being performed by Chinese labor.

Long gone are the days when you just throw a few thousand pick-ax and wheel barrow wielding coolies at a project when a couple hundred semi-skilled people who can handle heavy machinery can get the job done in a much shorter time, and they are still paid shitty wages (by Western standards).

And they bring their own labor with them to do the job. The onslaught of Chinese workers in Vietnam, where Middle Kingdom firms have nabbed numerous infrastructure project contracts, has created a xenophobic reaction based on a history of the Chinese hanging around.

So you're saying we should in-source politicians from Finland to solve our illegal immigration problems!

I'm with that!

.. if only.