While that is true, I would say the counter to that is that people in the western world have a bit more to loose than someone coming from a 2nd or 3rd world country.

I am all for putting a ton of strings on the granting of H1B's. If it's really needed for a position, a company should be paying well above market rates and be able to prove that they exhausted every avenue state side.

Unfortunately, I would agree.

If a country wants a piece of the action, maybe they should take a good hard look at their tax code. They may have to lower taxes *gasp* Perhaps getting 17% of something is better than getting 30% of $0.

The reason companies do this is because it's more profitable to hire an army of lawyers and accountants to skirt local laws.

It may "create" jobs - just not the ones we want. I can envision that it would create lower paying service jobs in the short term.

I think the intention of the H1B system was to bring the "best" people over to the US. Their "ideas" would create jobs, but I don't think that has panned out over the long term.

This is usually my response to people who say "Software Development is red hot."

It's red hot if you're a senior level person in some specific tech/industry. It is also very dependent on geography, and people can't exactly get up and move easily.

While that is a valid counterpoint to keeping the H1B program, I think part of the problem is companies choose not to invest in training programs and/or set the bar to high many times. Your mom and pop operation does not need to hire Donald Knuth to update their CRUD based inventory system.

Agreed.

Didn't the IEEE conduct a study that there is already a glut of people here already with at least a STEM education, but not working in STEM.... And we're graduating more people with STEM degrees than STEM jobs available every year?

Until we are at the point where anyone who wants to work in STEM can do so, I think we should not let in people. STEM jobs are generally jobs you want people to take...

No, that is not what s/he is saying.

There is not a blanket refusal of services to "Christians," "Atheists" or what ever other classification we can come up with.

What is being discusses is a very narrow good/service to something that some people find distasteful. In this case, some Christians find the act of gay marriage distasteful, so they would prefer not to take part in one. But, they would be more than happy to sell to them in 99.9% of other circumstances.

If there actually was a shortage, we'd see salaries rising and loosening of job requirements (i.e. willing to train people with half a brain, etc.)

Instead, it seems like there is a shortage of "good" people, which there will always be a shortage of regardless of field. Most people, by definition, are "average."

Because everyone punts to the next guy.... Managers (often times clueless) wait too long to hire much needed people until everyone is on the dreaded death march. They don't want to have to deal with looking for people so they delegate to HR. HR delegate to the computer in the form of ATS systems.

I beg to differ that there's an actual talent shortage. It seems to me if HR/management got creative on actually getting out and meeting people, things would quickly be solved.

I would agree.

It's not just "we want the top 5%," but "we want the top 5% that will take the median salary for the job title in our particular locale"