[ChuckMcM]

This rings a bit more true for me. There is no shortage of workers for enough money. I can offer $100,000/year for an IT worker and get flooded with resumes. The larger companies however like to buy at a discount, and the discount comes from someone in a foreign country taking part of their pay in dollars and part of their pay in the right to work and live in the US. That seems to vary with individuals of course but my observation at Sun, NetApp, and Google was that it could be worth up to 50% of the base salary for an individual to work in the US. That is a heck of a gap to fill.

It would be great if the H-1B system was updated to allow sponsored people to work anywhere as long as it was in the field they had said they were going to work in and they didn't spend more than say 180 days being unemployed. I suspect you would find that a lot of the "push" for more H-1Bs would fade away (although that is just a guess). I'd really like it if we could grant automatic H-1B status for 3 years for anyone who got a doctorate STEM degree as well.