Juan;

Let me say that your comments and my experience are very different!

In some cases we have laws on the books that are not enforceable for a multitude of reasons. Employers do as they please more often than not.

Tom

>Thomas,
>
>>>>Programming in Silicon Valley will find many H1B's employed. They work for less, do not stay to retire (helping to reduce an employers cost for employees) and take away opportunities from those who have lived and trained here all their lives.
>
>Working for less money than locals is not possible for H1B's holders, in the Computer Science field at least. There is a legal requirement from the Labor Department called 'Prevailing Wage' , IOW, the minimum salary that the employers will commit to pay an H1B holder when they file the petition. That Prevailing Wage is a very high figure, higher than the amount the employer would pay to a US citizen, sometimes if you compare market salaries with those 'prevailing wage' values, there's a 25% gap.
>So I think the law protects US citizens in this case, it's just that for whatever reason, employers keep hiring people from overseas.
>
>>>>>One reason we have a large reduction in our Computer Science enrolments in California is a lack of opportunity for employment. 192,000 lost IT jobs in Silicon Valley due to the Internet crash, and last month we lost another 6000 IT jobs in California.
>
>Well, many of those jobs could have been lost to those software factories in Asia, not to inmigrants I guess.