As for the question of outsourcing projects overseas, I ask you a question, how good are you at architecture and writing documentation and defining requirements and a project plan? If you are not very good, then you are going to throw money away.

I have found that overseas contractors, generally don't communicate as well as someone in the company nor have the implicit knowledge of how the business is supposed to run. Someone who can get around in the company and know how it works can compensate a lot for lack of documentation. Don't expect someone, anyone, whom you have problems communicating with to be able to understand what needs to get done. It will end badly.

As for Perl, I have found that few overseas contractors know it very well. Usually they are coming from a Java, or a .NET or some other large commercial program/language as their background. They are also going to be hired because of their knowledge of said package. They are going to have a learning curve to get a good hold Perl and it takes practice to write good Perl code regardless of who you are. So don't count on getting quality results either.

I offer one statement if you want to outsource Perl programming, "Caveat emptor!"