What was infuriating about this was that at the time, the unemployment rate for US citizens with new PhDs in math was 14% (this was 1992), with maybe 10% underemployment on top of that. This company would have had no trouble at all getting a US citizen for that position -- if they were sincere.
Why the free traders imply that Americans with capacity to get PhD in mathematics should so naive as to chose such "career"? It shows that either the free traders are either stupid themselves or are completely dishonest.
> Iterated Systems (if I remember the name correctly), a company using fractal analysis to compress images.
I remember them. It was a cool idea. I tried out their stuff. At the time (1995 or so) we went with JPEG for several reasons.
> they had to play this game to "prove" no Americans were available who could do this job.
The surprising thing about the oh-so-intelligent free traitors is that they are not smart enough to understand this inevitable consequence to a market-distorting law such as all special work visa laws. Our immigration policy should be orthogonal to the free market - it should stand on its own to promote AMERICAN values, which extend far beyond pure dollars. Free traitors are fools.