It's also interesting that everyone agrees that the only thing in short supply is the highest quality programmers, but immigration policy is focused on increasi

It's also interesting that everyone agrees that the only thing in short supply is the highest quality programmers, but immigration policy is focused on increasing the total number of immigrants and not just the highest quality ones. Under our current strategy, we'll get a similarly small proportion of top quality programmers along with 97% who are basically there to keep down operating costs for MSFT (or Infosys, Wipro etc - arguably "bad actors" from the perspective of how Silicon Valley likes to do business). If we were serious about alleviating the shortage of top quality hires, we'd have a way to increase the quota of "the best" technical talent and not the current blanket approach, which really favors major employers trying to save costs. Maybe we let google design a technical test for anyone who wants to work here in a technical role. :) I think Facebook is sincere in their desire for quality talent, but since their CEO happens to be one of the youngest billionaires in the world, who has only worked at one company which he founded as a pup, he is equally inexperienced in "the real world" (eg, how many other companies operate and what they use H1B for) and probably a very poor choice for a leader on immigration reform.