H1-B Visas versus American graduates for Technology jobs

I now have many friends and even mentors among the people who came to the United States on H1-B Visas, so let me start here by saying that I am grateful for them and hope they will understand what I am attempting to state here.

Points to conceed to the vastly different political parties:
1. College education is officially now outrageously expensive. (I don't really need to put some links here to defend this point, do I?) I am a college graduate (twice), and my first degree left me with a whopping total educational debt of $8300.00 (which 10 years ago would have just barely bought HALF of the first Plasma TV's that went on sale at Sears). This is a concession to Democrats.

2. American businesses such as Microsoft, have waylayed Congress to increase the number of H1-B visas each year, because as they put it: "There is not enough engineering talent here in the United States to fill the need we have." This is actually true (to an extent), as we have not done enough to encourage engineering and science in recent memory, and groups like Microsoft are providing 4-year full funding of women and minorities to pursue these majors in college. This is a concession to Republicans.

My choice of universities after becoming a Software Test Engineer was pragmatic (I needed to have my employer pay most of the bill, and I still needed to get student loans). My situation is not typical of the college bound high-schooler, though, as they will incur huge debts by the time they complete their degree in Computer Science.

I now have three children whom I want to attend college (because I did, and because I think it would be so much harder to get the right jobs and experience without it). If I were NOT to project the costs out into the future, but use the current year at a state school and multiply it by 4, it would cost, for one of them, $32,925, but I'll round off for 9 more years for my oldest to reach matriculation at IU and say $40,000.00. Some of this huge figure could be reduced by tuition assistance and scholarships, but I feel fairly confident that my American children will have a financial load upon leaving school that will affect choices in apartment, car, and employment.

If we acknowledge, then, that tuition is outrageously expense, and if we acknowledge that students will be coming out with a huge financial burden on top of all of the expenses of day to day living as a young college graduate, then why would we make it easier to have those jobs taken away by more and more H1B visa holders that do not have any debt and can work for significantly LESS money?

As technology expands and the next world wide web is targeted to work at speeds of gigabytes per second, why would American firms remain here in America? The work can all be done in India, where wages are extremely low and the culture there INSISTS that the parents pay for the education of their children, up through and including their Master's degrees?

We are outsourcing good paying technology jobs and enabling the dumbing down of America. This is unheard of in our history. The United States of America is the land of opportunity that birthed the inventor of the Automobile, the Airplane, the atomic bomb, and the men that first walked on the Moon. We invented the personal computer, the first technology in history designed to make a better version of itself. Yet, we moved from exploring the moon to less expensive missions by building the Space Shuttle and floating around in Earth's orbit or out to the International Space Station. We ended commercial supersonic flight, because it was too expensive even after 20 years. We are finally talking about returning to the Moon with a projected shot at at manned space flight to Mars, but all of this will have to wait until 2017.

A friend of mine pointed out to me one of the costs of this outsourcing and always trying to get the lowest bidder as follows. If the contractors that come in are from H1-B visas and the work gets done eventually by workers overseas (the contractors eventually go home), then the money will not get spent locally, which means that the economy will not reap the benefits, nor will the tax money stay here in our communities to support the vital infrastructure that Democrats prattle on about (who will pay for all of your teacher initiatives and the $11,000+ we spend each year on EVERY single child in education in this country?)

For all of my friends among the Active Duty, Reserves, and Veterans of the United States Armed Services, we know that the word reorganization is not nearly as terrifying within federal service as it is in the private sector.

Indeed, just because someone thinks it is a good idea to relocate an office of analysts from 3 city blocks away from the data collectors to a headquarters office 630 miles away does NOT mean that anyone is going to have to start worrying about finding new careers.

However, reorganization in the private sector affects everyone -- even those that are keeping their jobs (for now).

Just 6 months ago, in a meeting with a senior director, we were informed that it was a great time to belong to (our department name redacted to protect my own hide). We were being recognized for industry leading technology, despite our many problems, and that the budget was increased to allow for even more innovation. We even had a number of positions converted from contractor to permanent, and I was among them!

A few months later, though, produced a "hiring freeze." No worries, here though, as we had seen these take place over a number of summers. However, recently the contractors were brought into a meeting and told that their contracts were extended from September through November, but that it "did not look good" after that.

In fairness to the management at our level, they did not impose the hiring freeze. Nor, it must be pointed out, are the management at our level responsible for any possible losses we might experience if things go sour at the end of November. Further, the management at our level have been appreciative and supportive of the contractors we currently have. Simply put, the management have done their level best to warn these contractors early that there may not be a job later, and that they simply do not know what will happen when the hiring freeze is over.

The problems with news like this are several, including:
1. Rumor and speculation abound
2. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is rumored to be squeezing every contracting opportunity at Humana out from the other firms that have placed many great people with us at Humana.
3. Tata Consultancy Services is based out of India, and is the largest technology firm in Asia.
4. We are using TCS already for some overseas development and for two of our testers (offshore is the term used for these resources).
5. We have had terrible failures so far with our development efforts using offshore work, but someone in upper management is not to be deterred (our previous efforts of offshore work were with a different firm)

Let me close by saying that those I have come to know have almost all of them become my friends. They hail from the largest democracy on Earth, and I am honored to know many of them. I celebrate when they become American citizens, and I invite them to stay here and help us figure out our problems. I have no issue with them at all, nor do I have an issue with capitalism for its own sake. The problem I have is that we are not welcoming enough of these visitors to get the vast majority of them to stay. We need to do more on this front and to value their contribution to this great American melting pot, because many of them, like so many before them, come to appreciate America in a way that we do not because we were born here.