Washington State, home of the biggest multinational software and technology company Microsoft, may be next in line to see a legislation that prohibits contracts to non-citizens. This will come close on the heels of a failed bid by Indiana State Senator Jeff Drodza to sponsor a bill forbidding state contracts from going to foreign companies.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal in an opinion piece said the U.S. needed to get its act together to improve education and training rather than ranting against outsourcing and resorting to protectionism at home.

Several states in the country such as New Jersey, North Carolina and Michigan have over the last year of the outsourcing scare introduced similar bills that try to bar use of foreign companies for providing services to State governments.

Washington State Rep. Zack Hudgins is repor-tedly considering sponsoring a bill to prohibit the use of foreign labor on state services contracts.

Tata America, a subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services, lost a $15.2-million contract this November when Indiana Sen. Drodza demanded it be withdrawn on grounds it was costing

citizens jobs. But his bid to get this move legalized failed when Senators rejected bill 0004 that he sponsored.

Rep. Hudgins embodies every software technicians’ woes these days in America. A former Microsoft and Amazon.com employee who has been unable to find employment over the summer, he signifies every IT engineer’s nightmare. His bill was recommended by the labor group

---- Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech, which listed several state software projects that it claims are being performed by foreign workers.

“You have state departments that are letting out contracts that are flowing to offshore vendors and the work is being done in India,” WashTech organizer Marcus Courtney told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s displacing not only Washington jobs but U.S. jobs.”

Washtech claims that one of the state projects totaling $3 million had been farmed out to a Texas company as well as to Satyam Computer Services, and another $25-million job that had gone to IBM would definitely use some foreign workers.

As with most states, governments go with the lowest and most qualified bidders and have no national origin prohibitions. Hudgins told Seattle Times that his bill targets services contracts and not packaged products and conceded that the State could not prevent companies from getting foreign workers on special visas.

Indiana state legislators debating the Drodza bill earlier this month tellingly said they felt it could affect Indiana’s efforts to attract foreign investment. Drodza is trying to modify the bill and reintroduce it in January.

The legislators fears were mirrored in The Wall Street Journal’s article which argued that while the threat to U.S. jobs from lower labor costs in India was real, protectionism could prove worse and would anyway fail to prevent US companies from off-shoring.

“Ultimately such gestures can do little to stem the off-shoring tide,” said the Journal in its Dec. 17 Review & Outlook section.“When manufacturers are suffering from international competition, politicians raise tariffs and erect other barriers to deter imports. But here the trade is in the ones and zeros of digital information. Preventing private companies and individuals from accessing such information is inconceivable, so thankfully there is little danger that protectionism will stifle off-shoring.”

Politicians can take the easy way out and use the public anger to their political advantage, or they could do something to change the real causes, the Journal maintained. “...they can focus on the real challenge, which is improving education standards so that the work force is prepared for greater global competition.”