> that outcome being an apparent shortage of your own skilled citizens. The interesting thing is even when we had millions of people out of work who worked in

> that outcome being an apparent shortage of your own skilled citizens. The interesting thing is even when we had millions of people out of work who worked in technical fields, SV and other major tech hubs were pushing for even more H1-B's. It really has nothing to do with skilled citizens and more to do with the salaries they demand which tend to be on the scale of 1-3 times more expensive to hire and keep then the off-shore people they're hiring. Just an anecdote for you: I was hired as a contractor on a financial application at a major health care provider here in the states. I was the only US born developer on the entire team. That included developers, project managers, and scrum mangers, On a team of 18 people, I was the only American. Several times I overheard team members talking about salary and what they were getting paid. It was shocking to me that I was getting almost twice as much as they were per hour for virtually the same work. It's not the skills or education that are lacking, it's the cost of the labor which is considerably lower for off-shore talent or H1-B contractors.