If anything, the US citizen is more likely to be competent, just that the freedom that they have makes them appear to be too expensive.
“That’s a result of distorted labor markets - where no reward is seen for completing such a degree - courtesy of various guest worker programs (e.g. H1-b/L-1).”
There’s still plenty of reward in most of engineering and in medical (at least until Obamacare takes over) - believe me, at least here in Texas the jobs are available for Americans. The people my kids graduated with had offers waiting.
But still, most American males in their early 20s (at least the kids of the people that I work with) are either wallowing away at home, trying to decide what to do for a living, or off to college to pursue a USELESS liberal arts degree. And with those degrees, outsourcing is not a problem, because there aren’t any jobs to outsource. And one of my coworkers, believe it or not, has a kid in a lower tier law school. Once the $120,000 of debt is fully realized, she’ll see that would have had a better shot in life by buying lottery tickets (look up Law School Scam on Google, and you’ll see what I mean).
In other words (American) people are seeing rewards where there aren’t any, and not seeing rewards where they do exist. ...and I guess the elimination of teaching math properly to Americans has also done its job.