[dragonwriter]

That's not really true; if the supply could not keep up with demand, the companies would throw more resources at the problem of meeting their labor demand -- that might be raising wages (in the most simplistic economic models, that's the obvious thing), but it might equally be putting resources into lobbying Congress to allow increased immigration. If they expect lobbying to pay of greater returns for the investment than higher wages will, then that's where you'd expect them to put the resources.

[diegomcfly]

Sorry .. that is totally disconnected from reality. Not only have wages NOT risen, they have stagnated (and not kept up with inflation). Further, if you look at the list (link is in this thread) of the companies along with the # H1Bs allocated to them/their ranking ... you'll see a certain big blue company in that list who is in the Top 5. They have been doing layoffs by the 1000s on a regular basis for years. I know. I work for them. I have seen personally at least 10 people on actively billing customer engagements (i.e., they were billing the customer, not riding the bench or working internally, etc.) layed off. These were highly skilled professionals with good reviews that were doing great work.

Further, I've seen many dozens of "replacements" come in in the form of H1Bs. These were literally DIRECT replacements. They were inexperienced and WORSE at the job.

This is no longer anecdotal. This is happening NOW. All over this country in the IBMs, Microsofts, etc.

It does not take a genius to see what is going on.