I’ve had three engineers work for me who were the American Citizen products of the H1-B VISA process. They spent their early careers getting all the stuff needed to get permanent status and wangled citizenship.
By the time they got to me (I did not hire them), they really weren’t what I’d classify as the ‘innovative research’ type I was looking for as an employee. They were good in the rote mechanics of STEM but there completely lacking in innovation, imagination, drive and desire to take an idea and make something real out of it, which in my opinion is what really sets American innovativeness above a lot of the rest of the world. No fire in the belly.
Bingo, that's exactly what separates American engineers from Indian engineers.
Here's the problem as I see it: "Engineering" is no longer valued in this country. It's viewed as a commodity skill, globally available and to be sourced to the lowest cost "provider."
I've been in Information Technology for over 30 years now. How I've survived at the level I'm at I consider to be fortunate and a blessing. I've seen people I've considered better than me shown the door in favor of cheaper Indian labor for YEARS now.
American Engineers are multi-talented, and not just in the basic STEM disciplines. Many also have business level experience, can relate to business people, and figure out how to obtain requirements from them in order to deliver a product or service efficiently. There's a real skill involved in talking to business people on their level, then separately to engineers and others involved in the product creation process that American Engineers have that Indian engineers do not.
Indian engineers typically have one or two highly focused skills. As a result, it takes MULTIPLE Indian engineers to match the disciplines of a single American Engineer. When the 'bean counters' run an organization, as long as the multiple Indian engineers required to replace a single American Engineer are cheaper, the American gets displaced and the Indians walk in the door. Then there's the fact that American Engineers are far more productive, take less development cycle type to deliver a product, and the quality is higher. Those "soft costs" aren't counted and by the time some organizations figure out they haven't really saved any money (and in fact are spending MORE) it's often far too late for the American workers that have been displaced.
I've seen that more times than I can recall in the last 15 years now.
And then there's the EXPLOITATION of the Indian engineers who (as I've seen) literally 'live in the office' for two years and have no lives to speak of. All for the promise of a green card that often never comes. They themselves get 'replaced' by another Indian engineer and have to 'go home' before their two year stint is completed, thus denying them their green card and permanent residency status.
This is the 'game' that big businesses are playing in this country and they're screwing more people and more lives than just their 'workers' ... it's damaging our economy, driving down our own standard of living and killing the middle class.
That's just truth. This is NOT the capitalism I grew up with in America. This is something completely different and more often than not, I don't recognize what our economy and system of government is anymore. I just know it's not what I grew up with.