I noticed you signed up today and I, too, am a newcomer.
Many Americans have awakened to the fact that manufacturing has moved outside the USA and inside China. Customer service for GE, IBM, American Express, etc. etc. has moved to Bangalore, India! GE service schedulers are located in Bangalore. Of this, of course, many Americans are unaware.
Our role in the global program is to be consumers, but it will become exceedingly more difficult to consume what is produced (outside the USA, for the most part) when all important jobs are gone leaving only poor paying jobs that involve flipping burgers.
Saying all this, I don't know whether to take your comment in a humorous vein or consider you to be another alien America hater who will willingly sell your sole for the decaying "American Dream."
When all Americans wake up to the insidiousness of NAFTA and WTO it will be too late.
Now, does that make you happy?
This analogy does not recognize that the IT field, much like the medical and legal fields, encompasses a vast domain of knowledge that sometimes takes a lifetime to master. The "buggy whip" maker, by comparison, was in a rote assembly-line situation. It seems to me that you're deliberatlely trying to kick a dog here when it's down. Until conservates learn not to do this to one another we're going to see the occasional Bill Clinton come to power.
As an employer of programmers I must say one thing, which is that I've learned through experience that a good American software developer is MUCH preferable to the low cost ten-buck-an-hour guys in India- and I'm delighted that my competitors seem not to be learning that lesson! I told my US programmer the other day that I was looking for the first opportunity to give him a raise, even though he'd be making almost three times the money I've paid offshore programmers. The reason is because he gets that much more done per hour, is low maintenance, self-motivated, and is honest and has a traditional work ethic. And I'm not going to give him raises becasue I like spending more money, it's because I don't want want to risk losing him.
And let me not just pick on programmers in India, because it's the same elsewhere. There is a component that is unique to the American culture that makes for kick-ass software developers. The guys from Europe don't have it, the guys from Latin America don't have it, and the guys from China ...well, don't get me started on them. They're all great people, but the only great software developers I've seen in 25 years that has spanned the military and commercial sectors, from Fortune 500 companies and the hallways of NASA, from underground cities and secret arctic radar stations to lowly mom-and-pop operations, have been 100% true blue American.
So, the announcement of the death of the anglo software developer may be a bit premature, however it is certain that the industry has seen it's "glory days" - and the vast armies of "technocrats" and middle managers who are not true technologists are going to have to find greeter jobs at Walmart.
There was a bit of wisdom buried in one of the previous replies, which was the suggestion to the US worker to hire the Indian programmer to do a project, and then to market that product. I do a lot of that, and it helps. Also, if you want to move into a related field then consider disaster recovery and other areas of IT logistics (because someday those same companies are going to want to move from India to the next Third World sweatshop!).