> So they claim it's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through

> So they claim it's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the US, where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American. An attempt by companies to drive down salaries does not mean that individual companies will not pay individual foreign engineers the same as they would an American. This is about the overall employment market. The idea is that overall, if companies are allowed to freely hire anyone they want, then the supply of engineers will go up. This will drive down, in the long run, what average engineers are being paid.