I started this thread, not to bash immigrants, but to raise awareness. Ultimately there have been a variety of views expressed which I think is really cool. I would have to say though that I have fairly profound experience in the matter and I can say with a fair amount of certitude that:
H1-B visa holders are paid less under most circumstances. SpeedingPullet if your hubby isn’t paid less, thats a sure sign he is the actual intended target of the program
The program already allows for companies to bring in lots of people every year 65k is NOT a small number
When people define a “market” for us to compete in what are they defining? The US is a market. Its not the ONLY one but it is the biggest, both in terms of employers and employees. A market is exactly what I am advocating, just a more US centric one.
By allowing basically an unlimited number of “skilled” and you can use that term as loosely as you like, worker imports. You take away the motive for Americans to work hard, by taking away the opportunities for them to be rewarded by working hard. This is especially true in fields which take lots of education before any measure of success is achieved.
I wish I had partied and chased skirts in college, I didn’t, I was busy actually studying.
The rest of my rambling is more speculative:
I constantly come back to what davelj said, “it comes down to whose ox is being gored.” In this case its America’s. There is a huge difference between outsourcing low wage, low skilled occupations and exporting the jobs or importing the workers of high value high wage jobs. That is that those high wage high skilled jobs are the engine of the middle class. Without them we are at least in the near term going to quickly revert to a two class society. The US, minus a socialist re-distribution of wealth, will start looking an awful lot like Palm Springs. The monied class that benefits from global wage arbitrage and the rest of us.
Our governments responsibility is not to see that India has a thriving middle class, but that America does. If we can help India to do that, that is truly wonderful. Not by cutting our own competitive throats.
Which is why I come back to my origonal post. Keep the program, keep the doors open, but don’t open the flood gates.
