I just read your post titled Ill wind blows in Information Technology. Very thoughtful and well written. I agree with almost all of it.
I agree H1B programs must be strictly enforced as per law. No question about that. Any misuse or abuse of the program should be stopped.
In your summary, you have listed 5 points. I feel you may have missed one point – which is possibly as important, if not more:
1) American Corporations like IBM, Accenture, HP, Cognizant, etc have opened large offshore centers in India, China AND other low cost countries like phillipines etc. For the last 2 – 3 years, I have seen a trend where companies are outsourcing portions of the IT departments to the above companies. These companies turn around send most of the jobs to their offshore centers… and so are not available here at the homeland.
2) Transnational companies like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Satyam and dozens of such companies that are based in other parts of the world with cheaper labor cost also sign large contracts – yearly or T & M with American corporations. They operate with the goal of moving 90 % of the jobs to offshore centers [sometimes 80 %]. I know that for a fact.
3) Both of the above are jobs that no one in this country – however qualified – can even compete against. While I do not know the exact percentage of the above, I am willing to bet (1) and (2) above takes about 60 % – 70 % of the pie.
4) When any Contractor [citizen or not] competes for a job here stateside, we are all competing for the remaining 30 % of the pie. And we “compete” against the offshore workers too who work for 1/7th the salary of an average worker here.
Are we going to let the 70 % the jobs that is offshored without even being offered here in this country continue without asking why???
Why shouldn’t we be able to compete for that 70 % the pie that is not even made available here?
I know for a fact that Bank of America, Morgan and Stanley, Prudential, AIG, Citibank… … … all who used Taxpayer money have large offshored projects that employ tens of thousands of workers abroad. Most of those jobs are held by (1) or (2) above.
What if the corporations decide to increase the percentage shipped directly offshore say for example to 80 % from the current 65 – 70 % as the recession progresses.
It happened the last time in 2001.