[nandemo]

Outsourcing manufacturing also depresses local salaries. It's just that it's not very visible anymore. I think it's fair to assume that, out of all unemployed Americans, there are some who would happily take a factory job paying $X; but $X is too high compared to the equivalent Chinese worker salary.

I totally understand that some programmers feel more competition is not in their best interest. If they would just say they are protecting their turf, then I'd understand. Doctors and lawyers limit the number of licenses, certain trades restrict their jobs to unionized workers, etc.

I'm just wondering if their objections have other grounds, e.g. moral or public policy principles, and in that case whether those principles would apply to e.g. blue collar workers (or phone technical support, or farm workers etc), and whether they would be willing to pay more for US-made products in order to support American-based manufacturing.

> If a company abuses H1Bs to import cheap programmers from China to San Francisco and keep paying them Chinese rates,

I think you're resorting to unnecessary hyperbole here. There's public data on H1B salaries and they're far above median Chinese salaries.

In any case, my question above concedes the assumption that programmer salaries are depressed to some extent.

[nknighthb]

> Outsourcing manufacturing also depresses local salaries.

No, it moves jobs, generally entire categories of jobs, to lower-cost areas. If someone wishes to continue working in that type of job, they must do it in a place with lower cost of living.

> I totally understand that some programmers feel more competition is not in their best interest.

That has nothing to do with anything I said, and in fact I pretty clearly articulated that such a view has nothing to do with the fear some people have of the H1B program.

> I think you're resorting to unnecessary hyperbole here.

I think you're reading things into my comment that are not there, because you wrongly assume I oppose H1B visas.