It wasn’t the typical rapid reaction that has become a staple of Washington life since Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Usually in political combat, the advocates on opposing sides of an issue attack and counterattack within the same news cycle, sometimes within the same hour.

It took Rep. Ken Calvert, R-California, two days to push back against a coalition of HR groups, led by the Society for Human Resource Management, that wants to replace the government-run electronic employment verification system that he authored, E-Verify.

In a hearing on Tuesday, May 6, the HR Initiative for a Legal Workforce was among critics that called E-Verify inefficient, prone to error and incapable of detecting identity fraud.

In an announcement released late on Thursday, May 8, Calvert’s office called on the organization “to end their campaign of negative advertising and often exaggerated claims against E-Verify.”

On May 6, the coalition led the charge for a bill written by Sen. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, that would replace E-Verify with a new electronic verification mechanism and eliminate the I-9 process.

Companies would be required to submit new-hire information to the Social Security Administration through a child-support enforcement system that about 90 percent of U.S. employers use. But before that happens, the Social Security database would be cleaned up through a congressional appropriation.

The problem with E-Verify, opponents argue, is that it relies on the current database, which has a 4.1 percent error rate and could mistakenly declare millions of people ineligible for employment. They also say that the Johnson bill avoids many other E-Verify deficiencies.

At the hearing, Calvert defended his creation, testifying that 92 percent of employees put into the system are immediately approved and less than 1 percent successfully contest a nonconfirmation.

About 61,000 employers voluntarily use E-Verify. The law that established the system expires in November. Calvert has introduced a bill that would reauthorize it and mandate that all 7.4 million employers sign up over a seven-year period.

Most of the input at the hearing came from people who were concerned that such an expansion of E-Verify would overwhelm the Social Security system.

After mulling it over for a couple days, Calvert issued a pointed statement on Thursday.

“While I appreciated the opportunity to testify, it was clear that the hearing, as evidenced by the second witness panel, was slanted against E-Verify,” he said. “The fact remains that E-Verify is the only tool available for employers, who are required to hire a legal workforce, to check the veracity of identification documents presented by a new employee.”

Then the shot across SHRM’s bow: “There are certain interests that simply do not want employment verification. That is why they will denounce E-Verify and assert that there is a perfect system out there somewhere, when in fact there is no perfect system.”

But SHRM is standing its ground. The world’s largest HR organization has never said it is against verification; but it will continue to oppose the current government system.

“Our opinions are not politically motivated,” says SHRM president and CEO Sue Meisinger. “They are based on what our members say. We think there’s a better way than E-Verify.”

The disagreement between SHRM and Calvert may intensify as November, and E-Verify’s expiration date, approaches.

Last fall, I had the privilege of visiting Ukraine when the country was holding its parliamentary elections. The colorful campaigns—and a general lack of faith among the middle-class Ukrainians I met that the process would improve their lives—offered special insight into the country.

My electoral timing is good again on my current trip to India. Karnataka, the state in which Bangalore is located, will hold elections May 10. The emphasis that India puts on education as a key to growth is evident from the campaign manifesto released by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In that document, the party pledges to establish cyber-cafes in every village. The goal is to take the IT energy evident in Bangalore to the countryside. Based on the number of billboards in rural areas advertising computer and business classes, it is clear that plugging poor—often destitute—people into IT prosperity is a priority.

The national government also is getting in on the act. Over the weekend, Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said that if the country puts as much effort into human capital development as it does into attracting investment and increasing productivity, it could add 1 percent to 2 percent to the country’s already rapid annual growth rate.

One program under way is the National Skill Development Mission, which is designed to help prepare Indian students for the job abilities they’ll need beyond what they get through classroom instruction. Chidambaram also said the country must increase the number of primary school students entering college from the current 11.6 percent to the world average of 23.2 percent, or the developed-country average of 54 percent.

In addition to this activity, the Indian Human Resource Development Ministry announced on April 20 that all central educational institutions should offer reservations for positions in upcoming courses to members of “Other Backward Classes.” This mandate is the result of an Indian Supreme Court order to increase educational opportunities for poor Indians.

Now, apply simple math to these moves and you see the talent potential in India. After visiting the country for even a day, you notice that there is no one-child policy here, as there is in China. Kids are ubiquitous. The Indian population is estimated to hit 1.2 billion by 2011.

In a country this huge, there already are big and growing middle and upper classes. From those strata, India is producing some of the world’s top engineers and scientists, many of whom graduate from U.S. colleges and universities. When lower-income Indians are given a better chance to join their ranks, there will be even more young professionals in Bangalore eager to take advantage of the country’s proliferating IT opportunities.

Almost every 20- or 30-something Indian I met during my weeklong visit to Bangalore had some kind of IT job—and so do some of the American expats I encountered. U.S. companies will continue expanding operations here. In a visit to Bangalore on April 24, Accenture CEO William Green said the company intends to increase employment in its Indian operations to 50,000 from 37,000 within a year.

These developments present an opportunity for the United States. For Accenture, IBM, Microsoft, Dell and dozens of other U.S. companies, India is source of innovation and a growing market. The products and profits they generate here are good for the United States.

But the U.S. must also meet the challenge posed by India’s strong talent pool. U.S. students must be prepared not only to work harder in school but also learn how to be more creative in science, engineering and all other disciplines. It’s the best way for America to maintain its edge in global competition.

Of course, the U.S. also is in the midst of an election season. It would be refreshing to hear our candidates, from the presidential to congressional and state levels, engage in an intelligent dialogue about how the country could improve its educational and workforce development systems to help all Americans participate—and prosper—in the global economy.

Instead, we’re subject to their efforts to score political points by trashing trade liberalization and touting tax cuts. A challenge—and opportunity—of the magnitude represented by India requires a thoughtful political debate. There’s still plenty of time to have one.

At the risk of looking like a walking cliché, I am reading The World is Flat during a personal trip to India. And not just to India, but to Bangalore, the IT haven that inspired author Tom Friedman’s catchy title.

I am not an expert on India. In fact, my colleague Jeremy Smerd wrote an authoritative package of stories about people management trends in India last August. But my coverage in Washington often requires writing about globalization—and, hence, about China and India.

I decided a couple years ago that I had to get at least a glimpse of each place. I traveled to Shanghai in March 2006 and am in Bangalore now.

What I am offering is not academic analysis but my impression of India in the first days of my first trip to the country. After reading the beginning of Friedman’s book, I was expecting that Bangalore would be a mecca that rivals U.S. cities.

Maybe that’s what I’ll see later in IT office parks. But the images here that strike me are the paradoxes that infuse most developing countries. Expensive sports cars compete for the road with the teeming auto rickshaws.

I am staying in one of the “posh” sections of town with a friend. But a couple blocks over, a Louis Vuitton store is about to open on a dilapidated street.

On tours of the city, it is clear that many of the people here—perhaps a majority—live in abject poverty. Their neighborhoods aspire to step up to gritty. Your heart goes out to those who are battling such grinding poverty while making less than $2 a day.

Of course, I know that there is another large section of the town that is thriving in an IT boom. I am staying down the street from a call center. I see the workers there coming and going. Every day in the paper, there are stories about IT companies making billions of dollars and expanding their operations.

One of the primary reasons they can do this is because of a talented technology workforce. Many of the world’s best engineers and scientists come from India. Even in the first few days here, I can tell India is a society that values education.

Colleges dot the landscape. Billboards call out for people to enroll in courses. All around Bangalore, I get the feeling that education is seen as central to advancement.

Many thousands of Indian students also come to U.S. universities.

That brings me around to an issue I have covered extensively: the annual controversy over H-1B visa caps. U.S. technology companies—and firms in many other sectors—say that they are desperate for talent and can’t hire enough foreign-national workers.

U.S. computer programmers complain that H-1B visas for highly skilled immigrants reduce wages and job opportunities. That could be true.

But there’s another subtle argument that employers are making: By and large, foreign-national students are more talented and numerous than their U.S. counterparts.

Leaving aside whether that quality assessment is fair, there doesn’t seem to be any excuse for U.S. workers not to compete effectively with those from India. For one thing, Americans have a tremendous head start.

In the Bangalore area, down the street from signs encouraging enrollment in local universities often is a neighborhood that illustrates the dire economic straits of most Indians.

Just look at the numbers. The literacy rate in the U.S. is 99 percent. In India, it’s 60 percent. There’s 54 percent enrollment in Indian secondary schools, compared with 94 percent in the United States.

After seeing Bangalore for a couple days, it’s clear to me that a kid from a randomly selected American family has a much better foundation for success than a child from a randomly selected Indian family.

The complex and difficult task Washington must tackle involves reforming education and workforce development policies so that more Americans take advantage of the country’s blessings to become the talent that U.S. companies crave.