Some things this article doesn't address (though I think many of the things it does address are useful additions to the conversation, as was the previous discus

Some things this article doesn't address (though I think many of the things it does address are useful additions to the conversation, as was the previous discussion here at HN, which helped me grasp a lot of the nuances of the question): Ageism, sexism, and white/Asian supremacy, in the tech jobs market. Every time I read about the disastrous shortage of tech workers in the US, I have to fill in the fact that it's actually probably saying, "There is a shortage of young, male, white or Asian tech workers". Companies, in the general case, aren't hiring developers over 40, developers who are women, and developers who are black or brown. The best companies probably tap into one or two of these options, but very few tap into all of them. Even Google and Facebook, widely regarded as amazing employers with good diversity programs tend to draw primarily from the recently graduated, and even pre-graduated, including paid internship-to-employee programs that channel the best students into Google jobs beginning a couple years into a student's education at "good" universities. In the youth-focused culture of Silicon Valley, it would seem absurd to suggest the same resources be expended to re-train existing programmers (despite pretty good data indicating that experience is one of the bigger leading indicators of programmer efficiency). So, I understand why so many are reacting negatively to pg's essay. I know enough women, minorities, and older folks, who have left tech because the industry was simply not friendly to them--it paid them too little, it worked them too long and too hard, it treated them as outsiders--to make me suspicious of the motivations behind the pro-H1B camp. I am for open borders, which would imply companies being able to hire from anywhere (but also employees being able to work and live anywhere), but the H1B process leads to a sort of indentured servitude that provides employers with an effectively captive pool of talent. If there were anywhere near full employment in the tech industry, and if there were a convincing case to be made that employers genuinely were hiring across a broad spectrum of people to fill tech roles, and were paying tech workers what they're worth, I'd be more inclined to get on board with this particular push. This one is hard for me to figure out, because I genuinely do want more freedom for everyone to be able to move about freely and work anywhere they choose, and H1B is currently the only way a lot of my friends have been able to come to the US...so I support it, and even support expansion of the program. But, I don't like that it so clearly serves large corporations at the expense of workers. It makes immigration to the US much easier but only for those people willing to kowtow to their US employer.