Letters to the Editor
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I might be the only engineer supporting this...
I am in full support of more HIB visas for engineers, and here's why. Right now, we have this constant threat of outsourcing in the industry. I think companies do have a very legitimate point about the lack of American engineering talent; as someone who has taught intro to programming at a large state school and sat through classes (as a grad student) with undergraduates at that school, I think there is some talent coming through US programs, but many students graduate undertrained in the skills employers need. So yes, more H1Bs means that getting a CS degree won't guarantee you a job because you are competing with not only your peers but also foreign talent.
However, if we remove the ability for US companies to recruit the best foreign talent, what happens when the US talent is just not enough? Companies start moving not only their support departments overseas but also their core engineering teams. Then everyone starts to suffer, not only the mediocre programmers but the ones who did work very hard in school and are good at what they do.
I have little sympathy for people having a hard time finding a job in the market right now, which is extremely hot. The problem is not companies bringing in foreign talent, the problem is weak colleges that let students graduate with degrees in fields like Computer Science barely knowing how to write hello world let alone design and implement the kinds of systems needed by employers like Microsoft.
The more talent that comes to the US to work, the more money stays in the US, the more jobs stay in the US, the more companies can stay in the US. More talent is only a threat to the mediocre. Outsourcing is a threat to everyone.
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Outsourcing it all
I used to work in a graduate school admissions office at a large university just a couple of years ago. There were tons of applications to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science programs from foreign students with a far smaller percentage from U.S. students. The majority of foreign apps came from China and a few from India. My coworkers told me that a few years prior, the majority of apps came from India, but U.S. grads had gone back there and created their own degree programs that had become competitive enough with U.S. ones to the extent that most of India's students no longer wanted to come to the U.S. to study and it was believed by my coworkers that eventually Chinese apps would drop as their own programs got stronger. I wonder what the app percentages are there now?
I believe that with their cheap labor economies, once they have their educational systems entrenched in place in India and China, the U.S. will have lost not only it's place as a work provider in the IT industry, it will have lost its place as a primary technological innovator and educator at the university level and in the industry as a whole. Foreign companies will be creating and developing their own technology and the U.S. will be shut out. Instead of looking at this as an opportunity to focus on how math and science is taught to American children and improve our educational system through mentoring, etc. while simultaneously encouraging our government to strengthen U.S. worker protections, IT companies shortsightedly go for the instant and cheap answer through foreign workers and outsourcing while bankrupting our future ability to maintain and compete. And universities accept tons of foreign students into their programs to keep them operating (many engineering grad programs admit that if it wasn't for the foreign students, they wouldn't be able to keep going) while providing no incentive for homegrown students. So things are going like pretty much every other industry that has died in America and moved overseas.
Oh, and about cheating? I have never SEEN such fraud as I did in a huge percentage of the Chinese apps (phony transcripts and worse - the university had to pay to keep someone on staff WAY more hours than they should have who was there specifically to verify Chinese applications and transcripts). So based on my limited experience, I can't say how widepread the cheating is, but I am positive there are PLENTY of cheating foreign engineering students both here and abroad.
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Another Approach!
If the issue were really the number of US Comp Sci graduates, it would be useful to examine why there aren't more students in the pipeline. If the resource were truly scarce, the compensation would rise, the positions would become more attractive and the pipeline would fill. Conversely if the pipeline is lacking the compensation must be lacking. Apparently these are jobs "we don't want to do".
The reality is that IT jobs are usually quite good jobs with better than average compensation. Unfortunately they require a great deal of hard-earned skill and constant work to stay current. These positions are also limited in growth; the path to the top isn't in IT. I think any student would take a look at the work required to become skilled, the work required to stay skilled, and the limitations and choose another path. This is what impacts the US Comp Sci pipeline. (Ignoring preferences for types of work, etc.) Well, that and the lack of non-doctor/lawyer/police television. (The general public has NO idea what an IT job is.)
I would rather see MicroSoft put its money where its mouth is and provide funding to schools and graduates to create the pool of potential employees they're looking for. Stop pirating the economic investment made by other countries. It takes a huge econmic investment to produce a Phd. (It costs more to produce a Phd than a Phd typically earns. Its the larger, societal benefits that make the Phd investment worthwhile.) The BrainDrain places the burden of production on the poorer countries and places the benefits in the richer countries. Microsoft, Intel etc. can and ethically should bare these costs. Stop the piracy!
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Differentiation vs. Competition
Everyone who took Econ 101 remembers Comparitive Advantage... you do what you do best, and let the competitor do what they do best, and then you trade.
Same thing applies here. Right now, India/China make engineers & coders cheaper than we do. Same quality? I'm not going to touch that with a 10-foot pole.
What "home grown" Americans can generally offer more effectively than offshore coders is meaningful analysis, communication skills and "big-picture" items. The long-term model trends towards managers, designers and architects onshore, and coders offshore. For better or for worse.
Designing the system rather than coding it. Writing the requirements rather than developing reports. Things along those lines. That's where onshore resources need to offer value.
Even as a coder, you need to offer these skills in order to remain viable.
Introducing more H-1Bs is going to benefit a lot of workers (globally) and a lot of companies (globally and locally). Workers need to find their niche in filling in the gaps that H-1Bs can't fill.
The example that always gets trotted out is that canal workers fought like hell to get the government to keep railroads from growing, and railroad workers fought like hell to keep airlines from growing. Fighting offshoring is a losing battle. Find your niche. There are some things that don't make sense to outsource. Figure out what they are.