[DenisM]

I am absolutely confident there is no shortage of good software engineers willing to drop everything and move to another part of the country for $500k/year. Absolutely no shortage. If you raise your wages, you will find someone to do the work. If you can't afford to raise the wages, your business plan is not viable. I mean, I could use a houseworker to clean my house for $1 per day, does it mean I should get my wish as well? Nope.

Skilled immigration is valuable for another reason though - the more talent in the leading industry the better it is for the country, and draining other countries of their talent is also a valuable competition tactics.

[yajoe]

There are many people leaving Microsoft right now. Mostly good people. There are four types of people who stay at Microsoft:

1) Top performers who are on a fast-track (<1% of workforce)

2) People who can't get jobs elsewhere (30%)

3) People who have families and are tied to Redmond area (40%)

4) People who can get jobs elsewhere but have visa restrictions and are afraid to upset their status (30%)

Everyone else leaves or has already left within 2 years. I joked with a colleague yesterday, "Hey, have you talked to anyone from the old team?" "Yeah, I've been forwarding their resumes..."

Microsoft is working to reduce people in #2 and #3 through its performance review system. They then want to increase people in #4 so they have more people who can't leave them as they start cost cutting when Win8 isn't a roaring success.

I personally find it heart-wrenching to watch friends who would leave their abusive situations and work for a start-up but cannot due to silly visa paperwork. I just don't trust that Microsoft would want more people to come without restrictions to work for a specific company. It does't benefit them at all.

I just wish skilled computer science people could work for whomever they want. Our industry would be so much better off. So long as you pay taxes and are a lawful person, I support anyone living in this country.

[malandrew]

  I just wish skilled computer science people could work 
  for whomever they want. Our industry would be so much 
  better off. So long as you pay taxes and are a lawful 
  person, I support anyone living in this country.

Amen to that. I wish more people though this way. Citizenship based on birthright is a really antiquated notion in my view and I'm surprised more countries, at least smaller ones, haven't experimented with this idea more.

[DenisM]

>I personally find it heart-wrenching to watch friends who would leave their abusive situations and work for a start-up but cannot due to silly visa paperwork.

H1B holders can switch from company to company without problems, there is a small amount of paperwork and a fee. Greencard applications are also transferable.

[gms]

Being on a visa allows you to switch jobs. The new company has to pay a small fee to do it, but any medium-to-large company will do it.