I'm glad to see IEEE take a principled stand against expansion of the H1B program, and I'm particularly glad to see them take on the claim that support for the

I'm glad to see IEEE take a principled stand against expansion of the H1B program, and I'm particularly glad to see them take on the claim that support for the H1B program is equivalent to support for immigrants or immigration. Unfortunately, they get it slightly wrong when they claim that the UC was built by green card holders rather than guest workers. I think I know what they mean here - that the immigrants we celebrate who did amazing things came here as free and full members of the workforce, free to choose their own path in life, rather than as "guest workers" forced to work in a field dictated by their employer. Unfortunately, a grim look at US history will make it pretty clear that the a decent chunk of US was built on the backs of people who were not free. But I certainly would agree with the IEEE that freedom of choice is a much better guiding principle than coercive programs controlled by corporations who control their employee's rights to live and work in the US (we can disagree about test first development, but I don't like the idea that the person who insists on it can have the person who questions it deported). While it's may be good politics not to question the $138k a year salary paid to a Facebook employee, I hope that here on HN we can agree that $138k isn't a remarkable salary for highly skilled, critical technology worker in Silicon Valley. This is a place where a house costs well over a million a year. In San Francisco, the median salary for a registered nurse is about $133k a year (http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-nurse/salary http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-nurse/s... I absolutely am not complaining, registered nurses are talented people who deserve excellent salaries. But it does kind of put it in perspective, that Facebook, a multi multi billion dollar corporation, is dealing with such a critical shortage of high skilled technologists that it is forced to pay them about roughly what a registered nurse earns in the region. Sounds to me like if people choose to become registered nurses rather than Facebook engineers, the market is working exactly as it should, and I see no reason to create a visa program that denies immigrants the right to make that choice just because Facebook thinks it knows best for them and their lives.