[marcell]

Disagree. There may be a short term bump, but long term it would be damaging. Tech workers are value creators. Having a hub of talent like SV increases value and salaries for everyone here because it attracts companies here, increasing demand along with supply. If there’s no talent in SV, there’s also no companies here. They’ll just move overseas to where the talent lives.

[garyfirestorm]

Again, I have mentioned this in different threads. H1B isn't just for SV. There's way more companies in US like automotive industry that needs multidisciplinary engineers (mechanical, controls, signal processing, programming, active system knowledge). It's just impossible to find people. My team has about 3 empty vacancies with job postings everywhere, we just can't find people with skills (I am on H1B, there aren't enough people in many fields) stop applying H1B = cheap tech jobs logic.

Also, the Masters degree I pursued (in mechanical engineering - Dynamics/Vibrations/Acoustics) had barely a couple of American kids vs ~8 foreign kids.

[nickserv]

Exactly. If you really care about being competitive, invest in education and social services. Then the locals can compete effectively for high value jobs.