I was leafing through yesterday's dead-tree print edition of the National Post when an article afront the "FP Working" section caught my eye: It looked to be a piece on immigration, hinted at by the accompanying graphic of a shipping box containing several goofy-looking "techie" caricatures. The box was drawn with the label "URGENT, SHIP OVERNIGHT TO CANADA", and was emblazoned with the flag of India.

Given that Canada has the highest per-capita immigration rate in the world, articles on the topic are often thought-provoking and informative, and usually serve as worthwhile fodder for debate, so I gave it a closer look.

Disappointingly, it turned out instead to be a hilarious piece about offshoring[*1], written with such wide-eyed naivety that I had to check the date on the paper to see if I accidentally pulled out one from half a decade ago, when this sort of "win/win!" nonsense was even remotely believable.

Without tearing apart the numerous fundamental errors in this terrible article[*2] (oh, but everyone is doing it, the article claims, so surely it must be true?), I'd rather simply point you to Paul Graham's excellent essay on covert public relations via submarine PR.

If the author (and/or the paper) didn't get a handsome kickback, they were robbed. I was surprized (and dismayed) that there weren't "advertorial!" disclaimers atop it.

*1 - And I'm anything but an isolationist, and entirely believe in globalization. Apart from minor transition hiccups, the end result is the enrichment of everyone.

*2 - In the case of offshoring, the early "cheapness" quickly faded as knowledge workers in India and China decided that their lot in life wasn't just to be producers for the West, but rather that they too wanted a chance to "consume". Wages have been increasing at a torrential pace, and getting anyone anywhere above terribly incompetent has been described as close to impossible (while there are huge numbers of great talents, there are also huge numbers of potential employers. Bob's Oil Cleaning is going to get the absolute dregs of the dregs of the dregs working on their app - and that's ignoring the ridiculous contention that having the app developed during the twilight hours is somehow advantageous for an industry that hasn't even come to grips with telecommuting - leading to quality problems that are becoming a serious concern in the industry)