1. H1B salaries are supposed to be competitive and typically posted in your workplace. So you can figure out if you are being undercut by the dirty immigrant co

1. H1B salaries are supposed to be competitive and typically posted in your workplace. So you can figure out if you are being undercut by the dirty immigrant coming in. 2. A huge percentage of H1B engineers you will probably interact with went to school here, typically with Masters degrees etc. So I am not convinced their talents as far as writing ruby/$foo language applications are any worse than an equivalent undergrad. In the bay area at least, the term local is a farce. A majority of citizens move here from the rest of the country. As far as a native is concerned, we are all techies driving up the market. Of course, I think the H1B is exploitative in other ways than money. It is indentured labor. I may pay Johnny American and the immigrant the same salaries, but the immigrant once fired needs to find a job the next day or is out of status. The American can go on unemployment etc. The two weeks when my company decided to dither on whether they wanted to layoff people or not was stressful for all. However, the immigrants were the ones who had to decide whether to pack their bags after spending 4-5 years building roots in this country. Also, sure a huge percentage of H1Bs are utilized by software shops based offshore to bring people here on short term projects. This is startup world though. How much of your work are you going to outsource to India?