At one time, America was a great country, but now our corrupt politicians are turning it into just another third world country. I don't blame you for leaving. The guestworker visa system is designed to transfer wealth from the middle class (IT workers) to the rich (corporate execs) by lowering wages for IT workers through wage arbitrage and taking the resulting wage savings for themselves. All with the assistance of government.

Note that I mostly do Fortune 500, and they mostly do contract workers with only a few direct hire H1Bs, so things may be different with a small business doing a direct perm hire for a guestworker...

The Fortune 500 are bringing them in so fast that they really don't have time (and sometimes no longer have any permanent folks left with the expertise) to do a technical interview, so they often rely on the bodyshop which has a vested interest in getting a body on site no matter what their qualifications. This financial house brought in 150 in the space of a couple weeks (of which 90 were in one huge boiler room with me). The larger the corporation, the less they bother with due diligence. Since they no longer hire from within, but poach folks from each other, they no longer have the managerial skills to do due diligence. (Running Microsoft Project or one of its bastard progeny does *not* constitute "managerial skills".)

They are paid much less than equivalent American workers, often 30-50% less, so the taxes they pay are far less.

And most are not permanent employees paid by the corporation, but are contracters paid by the bodyshop and many bodyshops (especially for the L1s) pay them back in the home country in order to avoid taxes entirely (and avoid scrutiny of their low reates of pay).

I'm not humbled. At my last contract at a noted financial house, I was placed in a room with 90 programmers and analysts. Of the 90, only two were Americans, me and a secretary to keep the records.

Of the guestworkers, most only lasted the two weeks it took to ask them to do something and to realize they couldn't do what their resumes claimed, such as testers who didn't know what a test case was. So they were replaced with another H1B, who was no better. This continued until they finally gave up and started to pay the freight and hire Americans who stayed because they were competent and had not lied on their resumes. When the project finally wound down, 90% of those remaining were Americans.

So if you are "humbled" by their abilities, I am sorry for you.

It was not always this way. Ten years or more ago, the H1Bs were competent. No, they never had skills that were unavailable locally, but they were good. Now those who have the skills they claim are a minority.

Although guestworkers can be used for almost any job requiring a BA, most are concentrated in IT (computer programmers, analysts, administrators, etc.), which total about three million.

Leaving out other guestworker categories, such as L1 which has no limits whatsoever, the H1B category lasts six years, with unlimited renewals if a green card is applied for. Since (until our economy died) nearly all H1Bs wanted a green card,that means any H1B holder can stay here forever. So they are additive...got that?

For several years the quotas were 200,000 per year, and for several years they were a tad over 100,000 per year. It only takes five or so years to get a million total, out of our total IT population of three million. Um, that is one out of every three jobs. If you ever worked in an IT shop in the Fortune 500 (where some of us spent our whole professional lives), you would be able to look around and see that about a third of all current IT workers are guestworkers.

And the current 85K per year (typically exceeded "by accident"), does not even mention the totally unlimited number of H1B visas available to educational or non-profit institutions.

Well, at least I can hope that your turn will come soon...

Um, not the INS, why would they have the information?

Try the Department of Labor: http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/wageinfo.cfm

Oh, and if they "need the talent" then why are companies laying off the workers who were doing the jobs, but not allowing them to leave and not giving them their severance pay until after the older worker finishes teaching the new H1B how to do the job that the H1B is supposed to be so much better at doing? Please get some knowledge of the real world before spouting off the propaganda of "CompeteAmerica" or the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

They are not, repeat *not* paid the same. They are paid on average 30% less for H1B and 50% less for L1. The H1Bs are paid less (semi-legally) due to age discrimination (laying off workers over age 40 and replacing them with younger, less talented H1Bs, because there is NOT "a prevailing wage" but four of them, from "entry level" to "fully competent". So all the company has to do is replace a "fully competent" American with an "entry level" H1B and they can pay at the 17th percentile wage instead of the 50th++ percentile they were paying.

Please do some research before spouting off. If you don't know where to start to find actual information, then start here: http://www.flcdatacenter.com/skill.aspx

They came here to carve a new life... ...out of the American Indian!

The American auto industry didn't die because of unions. It died because idiotic managers refused to build cars with any quality controls, and Japan listened to Deming. Then idiotic managers chose to try to force consumers to buy gas guzzlers just as gas prices rose to four bucks a gallon. Poor management was not caused by the unions.