And even the first kind of companies is restricted by the prevailing wage law, so they pay quite a good wage as a result.

No they don't. They don't because the H1Bs don't complain about it (because complainers get fired, especially when they complain to someone who's in a position to cause the business trouble), so there's little chance they'll get caught. Even if they do complain, good luck finding out what the "native" workers actually get paid; that information is usually confidential.

You were talking about yourself ("I can replace my job in 1/10th the time/cost it would take my employer to replace me."), then you made a value judgement against others ("If you are at your employers mercy, you have no one to blame but yourself.") Attacking your value judgement and your privilege is reasonable in that context.

When your job description includes the dreaded "other duties as assigned by management" that becomes meaningless. Job descriptions are basically there to con you into taking a job.

You're confusing "protecting employees" with "bad for business". It's a common mistake to make. Keeping someone from earning a living if they ever quit isn't reasonable.

That's almost everywhere in the USA. "At-will" employment is the law of the land. You can be fired at any time for no reason whatsoever, and if you think you've been fired for an illegal reason (for example, racial discrimination), good luck proving it without a stack of documentation, a "smoking gun", and a lawyer willing to take a chance on a case he/she is likely to lose. Most of the time your former employer's lawyers can beat up your lawyer. The only time your former employer has to provide a reason for termination is if you file for unemployment assistance and they fight the claim, in which case they'll invent something plausible that can't be disproved, or they'll just flat-out lie (knowing it's their word against yours, and you're the unemployed slacker that wants something for nothing, while they're job creators.)

The only time an employee is entitled to any process at all before termination is when there's a collective bargaining agreement in place, e.g. you are part of a labor union. And the USA views labor unions with about as much contempt as child molesters.

You can fire a contractor on the spot for no reason whatsoever.

I have yet to hear anything good come from a union in the last decade or so.

Ohh, the irony...

So having a job that you really love means you're one of the select few that has one that fewer people CAN do than what's necessary.

And, it usually means you're not getting paid what you're worth, since they know that if you like the work they can pay you less.

Well, when you consider that employers in the USA don't have to give any vacation, sick time, etc AT ALL, 3 weeks is pretty generous in comparison.

If you are refusing projects to keep your day job, you are losing money on the long run.

Take health insurance into account when you're figuring that. If I were to pay my health insurance myself it'd be another $1300 a month.

Thunderbird and Seamonkey have no paid developers.

And, as a result, likely no clueless non-technical product "managers" that never met a feature they didn't like, and also never met a tech lead or developer whose objections they couldn't ignore.

And as a manager, I sure don't need to lose the important ability to fire a worker who just isn't working out.

Gosh, you might have to *gasp* TRAIN them to be better workers! Can't have that! Much better to toss them out like used toilet paper.

There's always one, isn't there.

Plus, you have all the worker rights of the US and can use legal action

Worker rights. lol.

For almost a decade, one can transfer H1Bs. So, if your boss treats you badly or pays you too low, you can switch jobs and keep the same H1B. There are also lots of headhunters who poach H1Bs because the original employer has done all the hard work of getting the H1B, paying the fees and bringing the worker to the US. If they can get them to switch employers, you avoid all the costs of hiring a fresh H1B.

And if your current employer finds out you're talking to a headhunter or interviewing elsewhere, you get fired and deported. No thanks.

For the same reason you feel the need to pile on someone who's admitted his mistake.