Here's an interesitng link on the H1B controversy Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage. This is a paper from Dr. Norman Matloff from UC Davis, who testified for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration.

I think he's right. Two years ago, I worked for the CIO in an international shipping firm. During my time there, I produced a presentation for my boss to give to the Singapore Board of Development. My company had wanted to open a major IT office in Singapore, because the government of Singapore gives businesses tax credits. This means they're basically paying for the development cost of half your office. It's a good deal for companies, and business like Compaq have taken advantage of Singapore's generosity.

Part of my presentation focused on the fact that we would be outsourcing over 50% of our software development to Singapore. Singapore would benefit because my company would train these budding Singaporean software developers. Software development in Singapore would be cheaper overall despite the initial expense of training, because my company could hire developers for dirt cheap, compared to hiring costs for US contractors and full-time employees. My boss said it was such a good deal, and would benefit our company because we could save so much money, and also benefit Singapore because their people would be trained for free. The presentation went really well, but I left before the deal with Singapore was finalized.

I sort of thought at the time I was creating the presentation, that it would be bad for US workers, but at the same time it would be great for my company's coffers, and therefore indirectly benefitting me since the company was traded on Nasdaq. Is it bad for companies to do this? I don't know. Wall Street always rewards companies with lower operating costs by an increase in stock price.

It's a slippery slope for any company. You need to lower costs for your share prices to rise, and one way to lower costs is to move work overseas. What's a company to do? The employees benefit when the stock prices go up. The other way to get your share price to go up is to increase revenue, but that's much harder to do compared to lowering operating costs. Either way they go, companies lose. And most companies prefer to do things the easy way, and like that their stock prices are high.

Is it any wonder that H1B's are so popular, and that IT software development jobs are slowly being shifted out of the US?