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With unemployment at todays levels there’s no way anyone can say we need H1B visas for entry level programming / data entry jobs other than to drive the wage scale down.

Driving down the wage scale was also the goal back in the Y2K era; there was no shortage of qualified people to handle Y2K.

H-1B's, L-1's etc. were Greenspan's solution to increased wages in high tech; FYI they were also his solution to the burst housing bubble.

H-1B's, L-1's etc. were Greenspan's solution to increased wages in high tech; FYI they were also his solution to the burst housing bubble.

Don't you just love how our 'elites' like Greenspan treat people's lives like a commodity. We need to drive labor costs down, flood the market with cheap labor. Housing bubble?... allow people who can't pay back loans to have a mortgage. Who cares if a famly's livlihood and life savings are destroyed in the process. These people are Godless, destroying the "little people" with their policies.

Driving down the wage scale was also the goal back in the Y2K era; there was no shortage of qualified people to handle Y2K.

And there's nothing really wrong with driving down the wage scale; the wage scale for a lot of software development is seriously out of whack. Given the automation of most of the development tools, I'm amazed at what you have to pay for 95% "point and click" development.

Just like it was insanity to pay $60/hr for web devs back in 2000 it's crazy now to pay $40/hr for most (MOST - not all) app devs. And yes, I do some software development.

The platforms - hardware and software - have really eliminated a huge chunk of the difficulty in being a SW dev. Most apps out there are greatly simplified, and do not need high end skills, and should not be paid for such.

The market will bear what the market will bear. If $40/hr is too high, people will get it developed for less. That includes outsourcing - either truly overseas or with imported workers. I'm still shocked to run across unemployed SW devs and webdevs here in Seattle who still believe they are worth $50+/hr. No, you're not.

Were it not for the wage scale going down due to availability of surplus technology workers, US IT industry would have gone down the drains like the Auto industry paying ridiculous excessive wages for crap work protected by unions. US IT industry just cannot wish away the high numbers of engineers from India and other countries. Its gonna put pressure on the wage scale no matter how you try to shut foreign workers out....that is if US still wants to stay competitive and keep its IT industry rolling.