I'm going to reply to your query but first I'm going to don my flameproof suit. Those of us who believe, and have experienced being "downsized" because of the H-1B glut of programmers and engineers in America, mostly from India and Asia, are usually flamed mercilessly.
Let me say that I think there is something amiss in economics in America, something about not being able to raise prices due to labor increases because the Fed. Chairman, not-so-affectionatly named "Greenie" by some of us, will yell and stomp his feet about INFLATION and PRICE GOUGING.
Therefore, companies have had this conundrum. They can't raise their prices for labor increases, they can't raise their prices (or very little) for increase cost of goods, so they have to keep labor costs down. They have chosen to do this, either using the H-1B program or by sending the work overseas.
matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu - This is the email address of Prof. Norm Matloff who has testified before Congress on the impact of H-1B's on American programmers and engineers. I do not currently have his website address but a quick email to him will get it for you.
Basically, he has written that because of the H-1B's, American programmers are expendable by the age of 35, and engineers by the age of 40. I actually was able to stay employed until I was 50 but then I, too, hit the brick wall. My salary is too high, I won't work 60-70-80 hours a week without compensation, and they won't hire me because they think I will run up their healthcare costs and be absent too much.
So, I am unemployed and uninsured, and healthy as a horse. I can run circles around any of the H-1B's that they hire instead of me, but they don't care. They can hire one to do the work, and a second person to check and correct it, and they are still ahead of the game because they get so much overtime out of them. Why? Because H-1B's are scared to not work the excessive overtime lest they be let go, because until last year when Congress so fortuitously changed it, they had to start the Green Card process over again, and their clock to stay in the US would run out before they got their damn Green Card.
Everytime those of who know about the abuses of the H-1B bring it up, we are flamed with "racist" charges, or that immigration is how we got to being the great Country we are. I am not a racist, and America is full. Americans are having so few children, that we are now 50% Hispanic, and letting more people in from Arab Countries than we should be, given this 9/11-post USA. I happen to believe that we should close the doors to America for 5 years, while the INS figures out who is here, whether they belong here, and ships those who should be shipped back to their Country of origin.
Look at some of the threads on FR where Britain and the UK are reported to be losing their "character", and their typical "British citizen". Arabs have overtaken that Country and the landscape is distinctly different. The typical Pub character doesn't exist any more. The same type of thing is already happening in the US. Remember, Muslims believe in outpopulating rather than conversion. Their birthrates are incredibly high, compared to the excruciatingly low rate of Americans, British and EU.
Sorry you chose engineering. I am as well. My Dad would never believe a NASA engineer would become unemployable. Wish I'd stayed with Pre-Med and become a Doctor.
Good luck to you.
You're 100% correct TruthNtegrity. I'll add that if you haven't got experience working as engineer/programmer and seen how things work first hand or at least looked closely at h1b, then you just don't understand h1b. In that h1b is a truly terrible program. It is indentured servitude. It is short-circuiting the free market for labor. It is discouraging americans from developing valuable skills. There is a lot of insanity in our nation's public life and our policies relating to the economy. H1b is a desperate effort to helpp corporations, but it merely ads to the insanity, it does not combat it at all. The really bad economic policies are not addressed, h1b only pits some classes of people against other classes of people and produces nothing.