I'm all for increasing the H1B limits rather radically (especially in ag and medical sectors, but not so much for techs and engineering, to help salve the injuries to our friends here), as long as the government would start enforcing the immigration laws on the books and deporting violators.
(Another thought: how about outsourcing the responsibility for holding imprisoned illegals, thus saving jail space here, saving taxpayer money, and helping the economy of some poorer neighbor that we can trust to keep the inmates incarcerated.)
That's what they *say*. But there are issues such as management overhead, time zone differences (in my experience with Japan, Germany, and India, it wastes time, instead of the promised 24x7 cycle, since if there is a miscommunication, or someone doesn't *have* the answer, or is in a meeting, or..., then you have to wait until the *next* shift to find out.), dishonesty, turnover, bribery, lack of infrastructure, intellectual property theft.
Oh yes, and in third world countries, lying and cronyism are seen as advantages by workers.
Most Americans don't see them as advantages below the rank of executive.
H'mmm, that may be why the offshore resources get along so well with the top brass.
You might be interested in a vanity or two of mine on offshoring.
Freepmail me if you want more.
Cheers!
There's just one of the problems, besides the government not knowing how many visas they actually issue. We have 4 MILLION visa overstays that homeland security can't find.
Of course you are. It doesn't affect you.
"However, it is inevitable that disgruntled engineers and techies will complain about their plight, because someone will undercut their wages, and they want the government to "protect" their jobs here."
Actually, it's the government who's meddling in the job market on behalf of corporations by allowing that sector to be saturated with H1B visa workers.
I prefer the free market/capitalist approach without government intervention where corporations would be forced to hire from the pool of American workers, and forced to offer Americans a decent wage and jobs would be plentiful.
Instead, we have the government saturating the IT job market with an excessive amount of H1B visa workers, the type of government meddling that really amounts to government/corporate facism.
Sort of like unions "protecting" teacher's jobs?
>>However, it is inevitable that disgruntled engineers and techies will complain about their plight, because someone will undercut their wages, and they want the government to "protect" their jobs here. (Of course, such protectionism would not work, since employers will respond by simply hiring foreigners over there rather than here.)<<
Even if US citizen engineers are willing to work at about the same wage as aliens, in many cases the employer will not even ask the US citizen about the salary, because:
1) Many employers won't admit it, but they do not want to hire older workers.
2) Some employers assume that US citizens are too expensive, so they don't bother to ask.
I do not advocate protectionism, and I know that some companies do hire older workers, and are willing to train them a little when necessary (for example, a programmer with 20 years experience in operating system internals would be able to learn Java pretty quickly, and would have an excellent overall feel for how everything works). I am not sure what the government should do, but I wish some companies would think about this, both for their own sakes and the stake of their country.