There isn't a lack of highly skill workers - just a lack of highly skilled workers willing to work for less than their monthly student loan payments. This is about driving down wages - NOT creating jobs.

Thanks for this coverage. I am glad to see NPR has finally noticed this issue. It has been a problem since the first H1B visas were issued around 2000. And we in the tech industry have been saying this since it started. The problem is greedy companies want to improve their bottom line by dumping their best, most competent workers in favor of cheap foreign labors hired by the dozen.

Thank you, Mr. Kaste.

It's quite a slick scheme they've trumped up here. The marquee "American" companies are getting all the facetime with congress, gushing about innovation, while the offshoring companies to which they outsource rather mundane work are getting most of the nontrepreneur visas. Nice to see someone looking under the hood for once.

"Some of the companies are companies — yes — that are providing services that bring greater efficiencies to businesses. But what's wrong with that?" Garfield says.

It's not WHAT they are doing, it's HOW they are doing it. If Cognizant was tearing people's arms off because it would make them more efficient would he gloss over that with "But what's wrong with that? They're more efficient aren't they?"

In 2009, the insurance company from which I was laid off from was paying an hourly rate to Cognizant for onshore staff that once boiled down to their cut and costs of an employee worked out to roughly a fresh-out-of-college computer science salary. Meanwhile, 91% of us laid off were 40 or older.

I remember when some people I knew remarked that 'Indian Consultants' were being brought in...

And in every case, the 'Indian Consultants' weren't put into their own conference room, they were ensconced next to every worker. And the worker was asked to 'help Train the new 'Team Partners' up'.

Then count the months on one hand until the worker was Fired, leaving the 'Team Partner' happily clicking away in the same cubicle.

When I first heard these stories years ago, it was anecdotal and "Did you hear about Jim?" interspersed here and there.

Now the stories (Only Stories-- because NO Journalist will TRULY report on what they call 'anecdotal') are everywhere and everyday. Sometimes its H1B's, other times it's 'Indian Consultants'. Or it's just: "Management's brought in Consultants!"

In most cases, the affected worker does as he's told, trains the newbie and then 'hopes' that his cooperation will give him or her a different outcome than what he has heard from everyone else...and they're always proven wrong when they're escorted, unemployed, from that job.

What's the answer? I can't say, myself. In many ways, I say 'the cow left the barn' in this issue years and years ago and we're adjusting to the new normal.

One thing's for sure, I say: If you see this happening at your company..and you think you're worth your salt...Start Looking for a new Job right PRONTO. And Train NOBODY. They're gonna fire you anyway...so why put butter on the other guy's bread by giving away your knowledge for Free?

The unemployment lines are full of top notch, well educated engineers and programmers. When Microsoft says they're looking for the best-and-brightest, I think they really mean cheapest.

Word. Welcome to the New Slavery. Working for peanuts is the new PhD.

Thank you for bringing this to light.

This has been going on for 20+ years. Business says they need bright tech people/engineers, and that US citizens are not choosing to go into these fields.

Then they bring in offshore workers at fast food wages. Which of course depresses the wages for the industry. Of course the best and brightest in the US don't want to spend 4/5 years getting an engineering degree to work for fast food wages. They can make more doing many other things.

The offshore workers are basically held hostage by their new employer while they try to become green card holders. If they move companies, they restart their clock. So they can't ask for any more.

And the rich get richer, everyone else can go to school, work hard and continuing dreaming of being in the vanishing middle class.

The financial services industry began outsourcing their engineering and support staffs to SE Asia and Mexico a decade ago. How's trying to do business with one of these organizations today? Just another sign of the greedy, incompetent management that dominates the inherited-wealth trust fund board rooms of America.

Yes, but let's not lose sight of the important thing? How did their numbers and bonuses look the following quarter?!?!?!?!?

Thank you NPR, good job

As an alternative to the H-1B, I want to counter-propose a new law

H100A+: Offer the Bar exam in every major city in the world, without requiring the unnecessary college or law school prerequisite.

* Passing this foreign-offered Bar exam gives the exam-passer immediate US citizenship with full rights and privileges to immediately
practice law unencumbered in any State.

Personally, although solidly in the middle class, I have poor access to legal counsel and many people in the US are very legally underserved.
Small start-up firms have complained for years their legal services are far too expensive.

The H100A+ will help American legal innovation and help stem the great shortage of fair priced legal services so all Americans can enjoy
their rights. Moreover, “all those start-ups” founded by H1-B holders will have access to fair-priced legal counsel.

Thanks NPR! It's good to see a realistic article on this subject. Much better than the Planet Money propaganda piece this morning.

My former employer "leased employees" from Wipro and Tata. These folks were abused badly. They were worked 70+ hours per week, on of them confided that he was making only $20k/yr. If he didn't work the hours, they would send him back to India.

Meanwhile, Americans, especially white males over 40 who don't fill diversity quotas, were being laid off in large numbers.

As for ""There is a lot of anti-India sentiment in many of the criticisms and
articles around this that I think are completely unfounded and
unnecessary," Garfield says.".

Nice play on the race card Mr Garfield. But the fact is that the majority of the the H1B holders I saw WERE Indian, and so were the contracting companies that "owned them". (As many people actually said it.) It was the Indian companies abusing their folks, and undercutting Americans. So any disrespect that the Indians have accumulated has been well earned. That said, many of the workers were good people, but their managers....

Again, nice job NPR.

I worked in telecommunications R&D for many years and there were times when we could not hire people fast enough. We always had a large pool of job candidates. When the visa quota was reached, our company, like all the rest, simply relied on workers who did not need a visa. We went on hiring and we found workers who were just as qualified and were just as good. But we didn't have anybody who needed a visa in the pool of candidates when the quota was used up. Companies had to offer more money to get the experienced candidates they wanted.

Businesses say they need these visas to get the best and the brightest but that simply is not true. Companies like these visa programs because it allows them to lower their labor costs because foreign workers are willing to work for lower wages.

With unemployment so high in this country, we should not be creating more visas to bring in people from another country to work here in the U.S. This request for more visas is a sign the economy is improving. Creating more visas will be a sign Congress is once again selling out American workers.

Thank you so much, Mr. Kaste. I have waited so long for an article like this, to counter all of the fake noise about companies not being able to find highly skilled IT professionals who are American citizens. We are here but corporations just don't want to pay for our skills and knowledge.

Think about this way. Every state in this nation has at least one college of technology (New Jersey Institute of Technology, Florida Institute of Technology, Colorado Institute of Technology and Mines, RIT, MIT, CalTech, etc., etc.) Every year those colleges have a graduating class. How could there possibly be a dearth of skilled technology professionals in this country? There is a dearth of IT professionals who are US citizens who will not work for peanut and desk-slave conditions. Actually, take that back. Freshly minted graduates might be willing to work under those conditions if they could get in the corporate door.

Disgusting. "Here, train your replacement.
He's gonna work for a third of what you do, from overseas. When you get
him trained, we're gonna fire you. Have fun, now..."

Globalism may
work for the emerging economies, but it sure doesn't work for us -
unless you're shopping for that $20 toaster from Wal-Mort. But, most
of us don't think beyond that toaster...

I'm not even trying to stop globalism. But to have my government actively supporting its acceleration for the benefit of corporations, often foreign, at the expense of its own citizens is a reprehensible line to have crossed.

""What these firms have done is exploit the loopholes in the H-1B program
to bring in on-site workers to learn the jobs [of] the Americans to
then ship it back offshore," he says. "And also to bring in on-site
workers who are cheaper on the H-1B and undercut American workers right
here.""

The loopholes are not accidental. I strongly believe the loopholes

were engineered into past legislation by our corrupted politicians.

It hurts when your fellow career politicians who claim to look out for the common good of its citizens and country sold all of them down river, lock stock and barrel.

Nice to see quality middle-of-the-road coverage as one expects of NPR usually. For 15 years, the H-1B debate has been sweeping from one extreme where the program is vilified as pure American worker displacement to the other where it is supposed to be bringing in exotic talent that the US cannot produce. In actuality, the program has gravitated towards 2 pools:
- IT outsourcers (almost exclusively from India)
- Well educated foreign talent (more balanced, but still heavily China and India).

The first pool is a case of clear displacement. It is against the spirit of the H-1B program. However, taking a step back, while the H-1B takes the flack for it, not sure what you can do about the fact that outsourcing does save firms cash. If labor costs $20/hour in India as compared to $45/hour in the US, it is surprising at all that investors want to arbitrage this?

The second pool gets much less press; and I think it can be win-win for the US and the H-1B. Graduate programs in STEM fields in the best US schools are clearly dominated by a presence of non-Americans. This is not a talent problem; it's just that a 25 year old American with $40k in college loans is less likely to want to invest 5 years in getting a PhD when he can make no more than $20k/year in assistantships. In contrast, when I came for my graduate degree from India, I had zero loans (scholarships paid for my ultra cheap degree from one of the better schools there). That said, I did earn admissions and scholarships to all 5 of the top ten US schools I applied to and ended up with a 4.0. I have been making 6 digits in my job following grad school since before I turned 30. I am working on a couple of patents and have the most amazing colleagues; no one thinks I am somehow displacing them. And I represent only the average achiever in the set of others who followed the same path as me into an H-1B out of grad school.

To conclude, I think the US continues to be a great destination for foreigners who can absolutely contribute to it and the H-1B, all flaws notwithstanding, is a right of passage they often have to traverse to get there.

You said it well buddy. As I mentioned in one of my other comment in reply to a post, it all comes down to sacrifice & hard work. Americans are hard workers, but we also look at our pocket book more than newer immigrants. Those of us, like myself or some of my business partners, who looked beyond the immediate pocket book, saw the value in a PhD or an advanced degree in the long run & as a result didn't mind the extra loan. We could repay the loan in no time once we were out in the real world, thanks in part to the sacrifices we made.

The consulting firms and not immigrants are the problem, which often gets lost in the media hype and hate coming out of this debate.

What is wrong with looking after your pocketbook? Especially if you have a family to feed and don't intend to go back to India in retirement. And if the competition is unfair, why should one not seek to level the playing field by making it harder to bring in cheap labor from abroad?

You explain the situation well. The overall topic is about how the companies and colleges are using the visa. Most of the time, the people involved, citizens and guests alike, are just trying to do a job. I would say there are a few things that can be done. On outsourcing, I don't think the need is to stop outsourcing--that's simply a fantasy and one that even if it did come true may be more detrimental in the long run than we'd like to tell ourselves. The issue with outsourcers is largely that these companies have gotten away with every form of discrimination protected by law for over a decade and underpaid while doing so. The lasting effects have also included skewing the labor pool in those fields.

The other point I view differently is the amount of press. I agree that the comments following the press are very IT-centric, but the articles are most often about expanding the program. I don't recall one in probably over a hundred I've read outside of IT-specific sites that talks about the programmer from India. It's always the Chilean chemist or Swedish physicist. But I see your point. Because of the amount of IT and the abuse within that field, more legitimate uses get unfairly judged.

I graduated with a degree in finance 4 years ago. About half of the people I went to school with were international students, mostly from East Asia. I still swap messages with several of them on Indeed. They all had offers from good companies well before graduation. Four years later, they are on their respective ways to great careers and I'm spinning my wheels at 2 part-time muscle labor jobs. This is in spite the fact that most of them couldn't write an effective report or deliver a comprehensible presentation in English and I'm supposed to get a 'other protected veteran' hiring preference from many companies. I don't begrudge these people for their success. I'd do the same thing in one of their countries if I had the chance.

So tell me.
Who in the media, government, and business community will stand up for Americans?

All of us that work in the industry, or around the industry realize that a caste system of sorts is being put in place that prevents americans with decades of experience, knowledge and wisdom from working in the industry.

But it is even worse than that.
These people are in their prime when their families are expecting them to bring home the bacon and we are making it so that they cannot do what they need to do as parents.

We who turn our cheek and clasp our hands around our ears should be ashamed of the irreparable damage that we are doing to families in America.

And for what?

To enrich governments and countries that do not share our beliefs in opportunity for all?

Who will offer opportunity if we Americans do not?

For those of you that have experienced having your jobs sent offshore, or visa holders imported by worthless corporations, please consider telling your story at Keep America At Work.

As for our corporations.
Don't buy their products and services.
That will be the fastest and most effective way to see the Brad Smith's of the World experience what they have been forcing on us first hand.

It probably won't happen tomorrow. But, we still need to work on a local level to overturn the heinous Citizens United Decision by the five GOP appointees to the Supreme Court. A Constitutional amendment is needed to take the money out of politics and bring back a government that represents the people.

""The top 10 recipients in [the] last fiscal year were all
offshore-outsourcers. And they got 40,000 of the 85,000 visas — which is
astonishing," he says."

Why not have laws to only have these "highly" skilled workers represent themselves. They can apply directly to the Microsofts of the world.
I thought the H1B is for skilled talented people, not for companies representing themselves as consultants.

So much fraud, and our politicians act as if nothing is happening, while supporting legislation promoting outsourcing invasion.

For decades they have been sending workers here for to do all this shenanigans.

It is eroding our middle class, and then the politicians and companies whine about our sluggish economy and reduced purchasing powers of middle class.

I can go on and on.....

If these companies claim they are also paying same wages as fellow Americas, why not have them send the check to IRS,and then have the IRS send the check back to those foreign employees in their US bank accounts.

'If they pay less than prevailing wages, then the will be pinalized two the prevailing wages for the duration of the VISA.

I bet those outsourcing IT jobs will disappear overnight.... just a hunch.....

Contray to the mythology, the majority of these H1B workers are NOT 4.0 students from ivy league schools. The reality is quite different. The workers I have encountered are coming straight from India and China. A medical insurance company is bringing workers into southern California for jobs that are not even technical. In one case, a worker was hired to take notes in meetings. The qualifications were merely '9th grade English skills'. Considering the number of qualified american workers available, not to mention the returning american veterans who cannot find employment, these practices are unacceptable.

I think we should contact our government officials and petition them to reduce or eliminate H1B visas. I think we should expose the companies who are using these practices to undermine the middle class and the american workers and, where at all possible, shame them or boycott them.

Here is a link to one such petition.

https://petitions.whitehous...

That is just bull. There is no such visa. In fact, such jobs are the most easiest to outsource. There is no point bringing someone into the country and pay more when they can easily be outsourced and pay way less in their currency!! Clearly your post is inaccurate unless you are talking about someone who came here on family reunification visa, which in my opinion need to be reduced. We should only have high skilled visas & eliminate consultancy firms from getting such visas.

In fact, the only reason companies have not yet outsourced all jobs that can be done from a computer anywhere in the world is because those other countries have not yet reformed or developed policies that make it easier for companies to invest, grow and make profits. It will happen once they sort out their own social problems like we did after the civil war.

The new world order is coming and we can either whine, which will not solve anything, or prepare to adapt to this rapidly changing world. Change is inevitable as all these other countries that freed themselves from oppression are coming out of the shadows. The wheels of wealth & power will eventually shift to the East once again.

It's not up to us to accelerate it and abandon science for the next few decades, though. Absolutely changes are occurring, but to actively insource both for what we're uncomfortable outsourcing to facilitate outsourcing with government backing just sends the message that we should avoid all thought work until our standard and cost of living are the same as RoW. There's middle ground in globalization.

For those who think others are many of us are against immigrant, they are dead wrong.

What all these offshore outsourcing companies, together with their Microsofts of the world, do also hurts other immigrants who are already legally here..

These companies, their minions, and masters are using the immigrant story ( history of hard work, innovation, rags to riches etc....) as a tool to mask their real intentions.....

Is Microsoft getting hurt by paying out an extra $100 million ( as a hypothetical example) in salaries, when their quarter profits are in the several billions eery 3 months?

Same goes for FedEx, Oracle, and so on.

If we pay people less than reasonable, like the Wal-Marts, then those people are dependent on our social welfare system. So this is like an indirect and hidden corporate welfare. It has been reported that if Wal-mart pays its workers more, it will not hurt their profits.

Again, I agree there is a need for foreign workers, but not at this fraudulent scale, and should not be done by middle mans like these outsourcing companies.

If we have to give H1B visas, we should give it to those foreign students who are already here and graduating with advanced degrees. After all, they are educated in US.

I guess our politicians are just too corrupt to listen to the rest of us.

The problem here is the consulting companies. There is no doubt that there is a genuine need in many fields. My company does not deal with any visa stuff and we have been struggling to fill a couple of positions (non-computer tech industry). There is also much more going on here and the word outsourcing is too simple to describe the situation.

First off, this is the result of globalization, which the US actually initiated & pushed for around the world. More than 2.5 billion people of the 6 or so total world population lives in the East & that is a market the US & the West wants to enter. The obvious downside is that companies will look to keep costs low while ramping up production. We can scream all we want, but anyone who builds a company will look for a better deal just like we all WILL look for a better deal when we are buying any product. Unless I am rich with a philanthropic streak, I will not buy a product that is more expensive than something similar that costs less. That is just human nature & you can't change that.

Secondly, many of these countries have been conquered & ruled by the West for their abundant resources for so long that until just 20-30 years ago, they were still trying to figure out their place in the world once they overthrew the often harsh regimes of the West, namely the British. When any population is suppressed for long periods of time, it takes time for them to recover. A case in point is the unfortunate situation of African Americans even after about 40 years since the end of segregation.

Now, these countries are starting to emerge from the shadows and beginning to realize their own potential, but are still besieged by many social problems. This is the only thing saving the West right now. Once they resolve their problems, which can take perhaps decades (lucky for us), they will no doubt realize their full potential.

Maybe 20 years ago, we in the West have been told that no one can do all these computer stuff other than us, based on how the world was back then. Well, the world has and continues to change faster than ever before. We just have to deal with it. There is no way around. History has shown that power & wealth changes regimes/countries from time to time. After years of suppression, it is perhaps starting to return to the East again.

Rather than whining, which will NOT solve anything, we need to begin to realize that this world is changing and begin to plan on how we can adopt to it. Otherwise, we risk perishing. It is as simple as that.

Also, there seems to be a lot of hate for immigrants. How is it their fault for a company giving them a job. Heck, if I was looking for an opportunity & someone is offering me that opportunity, I would take it too without second thoughts. By hating others, we just begin to cover ourselves with negativity, which can only lead to frustration, anger & resentment. All of which are perfect ingredients for self-destruction. Hate has never solved any problems in human history. Hitler & his work was a prime example of what hate can do to oneself and a society or culture.

Peace out & try to deal with this rapidly changing world.

I for one do not hate immigrants.
Many of my friends are immigrants.

It is the abuse of law (loopholes) by these outsourcing companies ( not immigrant workers ) and our corrupted politicians that causes social problems with long term damage.

Yes, I do understand globalization.
But globalization is often times one sided too.
We open our markets, while they close or half-way close theirs.

We also opened our markets without preparing our selves well.
Many small businesses in manufacturing went out of business so they big services companies like Wal-Marts and so on prosper. Germany did not let their small manufacturing businesses die, so why did we let our small business manufacturing perish?
And Germany today is doing quite well and is very strong in manufacturing, small and big manufacturers.

It is all about who pays the politicians in good ole' USA..

We also have laws that benefits the companies that that set up shops overseas. This is like pouring salt onto wounds of domestic small manufacturers.

Not much of real manufacturing is left here, except for military products.

I am all for free markets, but many times it is pseudo free markets (upon analysis) to benefit a few only.

I can go on and on......

they are paid 115-145 / hour all inclusive

Are you saying that Wipro and Tata get $115-145? That would not surprise me. Apparently the Indians believe in trickle down economics because the workers were only getting a trickle!

Seriously I doubt it was that much or it would not have been cost effective for my employer.

i preferred if you rephrased it as, large us corporations are willing to pay middlemen contract companies 115-145/hr for temp help to manage long term employee costs.

the indians should probably form a union or something.

That may well be, but I have no idea what the company was paying the middleman. I seriously doubt they paid that much but have no doubt that the middleman got a large share.

I worked contract for a while and was paid $35 some years back, my "contract agency", a subdivision of the "real" company as it turned out, was making $10/hour profit according to one of my managers. That was quite a few years ago.

I did not see this article on the front page of NPR's website.
If it was on the front page, it was not there for long.
Why is NPR not promoting this topic since immigration is a hot topic now?

As you probably know, NPR is usually very pro-immigration, legal and otherwise. Google the ombudsman, an immigration activist. This article is a breath of fresh air coming from NPR, and so are most of the comments.

Excellent story. Keep it up. I am in touch with a network of workers here in Seattle who have been impacted or lost their jobs to an H1b worker.

I like the idea that I have heard might be coming in immigration reform that creates an impartial bureau of labor statistics to verify the need for offshore tech workers, something that is done in Canada and elsewhere. For now industry is left to fabricate stories which suit their goals, and I believe the notion that they can't find highly skilled workers here in America has as much truth as the existence of unicorns.

Your story rightly points out that H1bs are a convenience to industry used to train foreign nationals or depress wages, and they ignore the facts on the ground that many Americans can't find work which respects their skills and enormous investment in education.

Something you might also explore is the alphabet soup of worker visas like opts, a very popular visa used to directly bring in student interns. A shame since college stem graduates in America are serving pizza instead of building good middle class lives.

Thanks again for your excellent reporting.

It would be interesting to know what caused NPR to depart from its ongoing meta-story of the unalloyed benefits of unrestricted immigration. Will they now start to examine its negative impact on low-skilled, educationally handicapped Americans as well as tech workers?

Wow, I am shocked that Nice Polite Republican radio actually reported the truth about H-1B visa.

Well done and finally.

But I guess it happened because Planet Monkey wasn't involved.

Did you see Planet Monkey's smear job yesterday morning?

Sadly, yes.

Despite the fact that Indian bodyshops use H-1B guest workers

("It has become the outsourcing visa," the Indian commerce minister,
Kamal Nath, once said...)

in order to facilitate the offshoring of jobs, domestic companies and educational institutions are much worse abusers of the H-1B visa, as evidenced by the numbers.

On the average, around 130,000 H-1B visas are issued per year -
One-third of them go to outsourcing companies,
Two-thirds of them to American companies and educational institutions.

Do NOT give Microsoft a free pass! Read what Dr. Norm Matloff of UC-Davis has to say on this issue.

Steve Landess
Austin, Texas

This is a reply to an earlier post by @HP NoGood. Yes, I acknowledged that the problem is consulting firms. However, even Germany is outsourcing its tech work to cheaper destinations. As for small businesses, they are socialist countries and do have some protectionist policies. And that is one reason the cost of living remains very high in such countries and anyone who has lived in such countries will know how that impacts life. There are advantages such as healthcare though. That will not happen in the US, we were founded as a capitalistic country, so we can forget about us becoming a socialist country. Still, even their small businesses are not immune by any means. Even small businesses in countries like India are being destroyed. Walmart already started rolling out its megastores in India. No one is immune in a global economy.

All companies WILL look for lower costs, that is the way business has always been done. 20 or 30 years ago they did not have access to the talent & the vast labor force of the world because of the changes in those countries. We thrived for as long as we did not just because we are a capitalistic society, but also because half of the rest of the world was asleep due to various reasons. We did not have any competition and thus we are used to nice high salaries, a big house, big cars, etc

That will change as the world changes. Labor is nothing but numbers, as the world population grows, so will the labor along with technology that will replace humans. So, wages will go down all over the world. But even opportunities will increase for those who have a business mind. Unfortunately, not all of us have the IQ of Einstein or the business acumen of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs nor the cunning+brains of Zuckerberg! The rest of us will have to get used to the new world order. Either we adapt and survive or perish.

Most Americans have never travelled the world, so we don't see the rapid change around the world and nor are we thought world history like the rest of the schools in the world. Our media is a joke, at best, and as a result our population is used to the lofty speeches by our beloved politicians on both sides of the aisle of how great we are and our greatness knows no bounds, etc They know it is all BS because they know the world is changing, but they can't win by telling the truth because our population has gotten used to feeling good about ourselves and refusing to the see how the world is changing!

It took us a good 100 or so years after getting rid of the British to resolve our social issues and start becoming a global power and economic powerhouse, countries like India and China have just emerged out of their suppression, so we might have another half a century to adapt and get used to this new world.

"And that is one reason the cost of living remains very high in such
countries and anyone who has lived in such countries will know how that
impacts life. There are advantages such as healthcare though. That will
not happen in the US, we were founded as a capitalistic country, so we
can forget about us becoming a socialist country. "

I beg to disagree.

Fist of all,, their cost of living is not much higher.

Their people are much happier,based on many surveys.

The are no more capitalistic than we are.

We are a psuedo capitalist country.

Do you not remember the recent history of bailing out too-big-to-fail bank and various institutions?

It is only capitalism when convenient.

It is all about who is paying off whom......

Another name for it is: Crony capitalism- The American Edition.
It is as natural as apple pie ( with apples from South America ) ... :-)

Actually, they are happy because they are contempt with lower salaries unlike us. However, this comes with capitalistic society where money is everything. As someone who has traveled a lot around the world, I can say that most of those countries are way to expensive. As I talk to fellow professionals in such countries like Swiss or Australia, I realize how high their cost of living is compared to ours. However, they have a social support network like healthcare, etc that we don't. So if they lose their job, they don't ever have to worry about such problems until they are employed again.

The problem in our country (and this forum is perhaps a fine example of this) is that people are never satisfied with what they earn, they always want more. This is natural as we are all humans. In those other countries, they are used to lower wages & higher cost of living, but they still are happy because of their support systems. We don't & will never have them because we were founded on different principles. This is the undeniable fact. Capitalism does not work for everyone and it never was intended to work for everyone either.

Ironically, if there is any truth to the claim that foreign workers are getting paid less than what they are supposed to get paid for a tech job & those foreign workers are still thriving in this country, it means that the principles on which this country was founded on are still working, for them! This has always been the case though, each new wave of immigrants - Jews, Irish, etc faced a lot of backlash, but each group eventually succeeded & this has a lot to do with sacrifice & hard work. In general, we are not used to as much sacrifice as newer immigrants. We take many things for granted while they don't. Eventually, their own kids become like us & so it goes on - the American story.

It is ironic that many of the tech workers complain that they are getting, say 120k instead of 150k, and then go on to criticize the very companies that they work for because those companies also want to make more money, just like they want to make 150 instead of 120!! Greed is in all of us unless you are an enlightened soul!

Extract yourself from negativity, hatred & jealousy, which may give you the happiness that you seem to desire like those in the other countries that you quote!

Peace out people!

Why must we sacrifice, Nick? Is your point the racist one that we Americans are lazy and don't want to work, and that foreign tech workers are ipso facto better than Americans? And I don't think the issue is 120 thousand versus 150 thousand it's more like 60000 versus 40000, if even that.