[davidw]

You're competing with those people in any event unless the code you write is impossible to move around over TCP/IP.

The answer is to make it so H1-B people are not so tied to one employer, so their wages are bid up to local levels in short order.

[ihsw2]

That's specious reasoning -- there is something to be said for Silicon Valley's capacity to support a self-sustaining tech industry. This critical mass is difficult to achieve and your implication that it can be replicated elsewhere is just deceptive equivocating.

The rationale behind this legislation is that employers have been driving wages down via a self-sustaining lower class of tech workers, where low-cost temporary foreign workers constantly trickle in. This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.

[davidw]

> capacity to support a self-sustaining tech industry.

You mean the industry that includes tons of companies founded by immigrants or their children?

I'm not saying SV can be replicated elsewhere. But the code you're writing can be, if the price differential is big enough. Outsourcing is a PITA, so if the price differential is not big, why bother. But... if it's big enough, innovative people will find a way to make it work.

> This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.

Or a foreign office without all the bureaucratic, nativist BS.