Americans already enjoy blanket worker protection, since you can't legally work here without some kind of visa. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I'm not

Americans already enjoy blanket worker protection, since you can't legally work here without some kind of visa. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I'm not saying it's different from labor policy in other nations. But it's a fact, and it does prop up U.S. wages. H1B visas do have the effect of eroding that protection and lowering domestic wages. That also may not necessarily be a bad thing, but it's also a fact. One way that it may be a good thing is that it lowers the cost of engineering services for the rest of us, the same way low-wage workers overseas provide us with cheap manufactured goods, and low-wage farm workers provide us with cheap food. If I.T. wage growth exceeds productivity growth in that sector (I'm not saying it does, I'm saying if it does), then we're being overcharged for I.T. services.