The above questions are out of interest, not argument. Basically, I am in favor of legal immigration as long as it is selective and targeted to those willing to contribute to our nation and accept our values. However, I am concerned that too much is driven by a demand for cheaper labour. Americans willing and able to do the jobs available at a market wage should have priority, even if they are past a certain unrealistic age.
There are many factors. Programming, even business application programming, is primarily a young man's game. The best people tend to advance into either management or other careers that pay a higher salary with less stress.
This may mean that the older people are less desirable, with obsolescent skills.
Or you can be like me, at age 53, and still be technical. But it is hard to keep learning a new technology every year. Eventually, you can't keep up. Moreover, if you are a mature guy, there is a lot of pressure to help out on the project management side of things, so you can't keep up your technical skills as well as you should.
But I would say people with a high skill level, if they have a good attitude, will always find work at any age. Employers are looking for them.
These companies are trying to hold down their labor costs in order to sell products at a more competitive price. In the process, it "costs" Americans their jobs.
There are parallels between the lower end of the payscale and the upper. Wherever there are folks who will work for less and are less than completely legal, then companies will find them and exploit them.
It's just that the H1-B process is more "legal" than the illegals working for farmers, roofers, landscapers, etc. But the net effect is that they do "rob" Americans of their jobs.
BTW, I consider part of this problem to be because of Greenspan. IF he weren't such an inflation hawk, companies would be able to pay more for labor and raise their prices. BUT since they can't, they seek the lowest cost labor and any other way they can find to keep their cost of end-product as low as possible.
Therefore, if they can find a way of hiring lower-cost labor, like H1-B's who are basically indentured servants, working obscene humbers of hours a week while waiting for the "safety" of their Green card, they will, at the expense of Americans who "should" be able to get the wages that their education and experience warrants. You can read Prof. Norm Matloff's bio here: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html
And there are several hotlinks on that page to his work on H1-B Visas as well as a summary of his appearance before Congress on the subject. He also maintains an email list, keeping the members apprised of the current events on H1-B Visas, here: Norm Matloff
< matloff@laura.cs.ucdavis.edu >