Keeping up with skill’s doesn’t matter.
It’s salaries.
You could be the leader in your field and a genius, but you command too high a salary and will be replaced by three Indians for the same salary.
Those CEOs with their MBAs and HR department heads with their gender studies degrees don’t know or care about technical skills and competence.
The good news?
I made a twenty year career fixing the lousy work of those cheap H1Bs.
I respectfully disagree with half of that. In fact I already posted as such (comment 11 that you're replying to). My "true that" to comment #7 is that I agree with you (and harptoo) that the salaries of immigrants is very much a part of the problem of American programmers being replaced with immigrants. But if we're honest that's only half the problem because we've all seen programmers get comfortable in their skill sets and not keep up with the ever changing IT field to keep their employment value from declining. So while I agree with you that the H1B visa program needs to be toned down, at the same time we should never ignore the personal responsibility portion of it.