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Brown in America

The Macaca Effect

By: Santosh :+: Under: Brown in America, Racism
On: ⋅ August 13, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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“The Macaca Effect” as I understand it, refers to the George Allen Macaca controversy and the possibility that were it not for that slip, Allen could be 2008 GOP Presidential nominee instead of John McCain. [Wash. Post]

Since we’re on the topic of H1B visas today and the backlash in certain quarters, which often borders on the xenophobic, I present thee with this article which discusses something called “the macaca effect”, with a different connotation.

The writer of this article claims it’s a common term in the IT industry (quoting her):

And the ‘macaca effect’ is pejorative used by people in high tech to refer to East Indians driving down the wages of American and British workers. In many fields (computer programming, engineering, medicine, nursing, accounting, etc.) companies are faking labor shortages to acquire an H1B visa and hire East Indians, with the net effect of driving down the wages of American and British employees. Thus, one hears disgruntled employees talking about the ‘macaca effect.’

After quoting a couple of protectionists, she ends by referencing Jean Raspail and the Camp of the Saints. I found this quote she used in her article (even though she claims to quote someone else), extremely degrading:

Indians are best equipped to infiltrate and bring down Western countries - and they can do it with an obsequious smile.

Has anyone ever heard of “macaca effect” being used to reference desi programmers? Please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions on this article.

Attempts by our bloggers to contact the author of this article to get her side of the story (if any) have proved futile at the time of publishing this post.

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