Pretty good. Also H1-B visa workers are also taken advantage of as the company may say it will sponser them but never does. Basically a worker that cannot leave and cannot complain. As said, there has to be better solutions. Also it is impossible that there are just continuously generated 'experienced' people. Define experienced. You will see these job posting that are deliberately defined as having skill sets impossible to fill only to have them filled by someone, possibly an H1-B who also doesn't have the 'required' skill set either. This is disingenous.

Also see...
The Bottom of the Pay Scale
Wages for H-1B Computer Programmers
http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1305.html
and

Reports, studies shatter myth that H-1B visa holders are paid same wages as U.S. citizens
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-09/i-rss090606.php

Gates also talked about his support for Estate Taxation... while he and Microsoft have worked very hard (perhaps even in a criminal way) by exporting (selling) Microsoft Windows to Europe from Ireland... billions worth... and never paid any US Taxes on that. The IRS was after him... not sure what came out of that.
Gates has off-shored jobs to escape US Taxation...
India had Tax Holidays... a 0.00 % corporate tax rate (although India seems to be implementing a minimum alternative tax of 11 % ).
Mr. Gates... what a character.

Colleen

I wonder how Bill Gates will feel when millions of technical professionals realize that the H-1B program does not require employers to seek local talent. That is right; there is no requirement to recruit Americans or legal residents! Then, I wonder how Bill Gates will feel when he realizes that the DOL says it is OK to discriminate and OK to displace via H-1B:

1. As the DOL states in their Federal Register, "the statute does not require employers...to demonstrate that there are no available US workers or to test the labor market for US workers as required under the permanent labor certification program."

2. The DOL's Strategic Plan states: "...H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."

The DOL’s published statements stunned congressional offices we have lobbied.

I challenge the companies that are complaining that they can't get an H-1B to fight for REFORM of the H-1B (and L-1!!!) visa. The fact is that if reforms were passed that stopped allowing H-1B's to be rented out by outsourcing firms and body-shoppers, and there was true oversight by the DOL to verify skills and wages, there would be plenty of H-1B's for those who TRULY need them. Outsourcing companies and body-shoppers steal the majority of visas for sub-par, low-wage workers before legitimate companies ever get the chance to get them. If not for this, the present cap would never be reached!

The H-1B lobby tries to convince us there is a shortage, but the numbers show the facts - wages have been stagnant and thousands of former tech workers are unemployed or underemployed. College students see this! The 'best and brightest' Americans are bright enough to know to avoid these professions!

Find more information on the abuse of the H-1B and L-1 visas at http://www.programmersguild.org.

We know why he needs more bodies. See below.

Quote:
I worked at Microsoft for about 7 years total, from 1994 to 1998, and from 2002 to 2006.

The most frustrating year of those seven was the year I spent working on Windows Vista, which was called Longhorn at the time. I spent a full year working on a feature which should've been designed, implemented and tested in a week.

1 (the shared manager) 43 total people with a voice in this feature. Twenty-four of them were connected sorta closely to the code, and of those twenty four there were exactly zero with final say in how the feature worked. Somewhere in those other 19 was somebody who did have final say but who that was I have no idea since when I left the team -- after a year -- there was still no decision about exactly how this feature would work.

End Quote:
See:
http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

US Companies routinely deny and deprive American Tech Workers an Equal Employment Opportunities during the screening and hiring process.
US Companies are hiding behind 3'rd party HR firms who recruit people having a specific National Origin (anything but USA).
Where is the EEOC when we need them?
How about looking at the flow of Terminations and
the Flow of hiring at Microsft.
It's amazing how EEOC simply cannot observe any patterns hear. Wake Up!!!

The Gates testimony was quite a spectacle. Lou Dobbs gave some good coverage to the hearing and had some rebuttals by Kim Berry (programmers guild) and Ron Hira (IEEE).

Parts 1 and 2 of the 3/7/2007 Lou Dobbs show on the Bill Gates testimony can be watched by going to the following links:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9183967286974233731

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3581912965027051739

As a public service, I will soon put excerpts of some of the most outlandish statements by Gates and his senatorial groupies. The Dobbs show just isn't enough to show how much of a sham this hearing was. The public wasn't invited to the Bill Gates show, but anyone will be able to watch my video clips.

Stay tuned!

Dobbs transcript:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/07/ldt.01.html

DoL Office of Inspector General report:
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ1998.html#19960522
http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/reports/oa/pre_1998/06-96-002-03-321s.htm
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ1998.html#19970410
http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/media/testimony/19970410.pdf

GAO reports and analysis of reports:
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ1998.html#19980512
http://www.gao.gov/corresp/he98159r.pdf
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ2000.html#20000531
http://www.ccis-ucsd.org/PUBLICATIONS/wrkg12.PDF
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/HEHS-00-76
http://www.tgassociates.com/Com-June2000.asp
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/he00076.pdf
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200209.html#2002Sept
http://www.todaysengineer.org/Sept02/capshavings.htm
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02881.pdf
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200209.html#Bottom
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/Fed03.txt
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200307.html#20030807
http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/030806_gao.cfm
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200309.html#20030930
http://www.gao.gov/atext/d03883.txt
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03883.pdf
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200312.html#20031224
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0312/24/ldt.00.html
http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/kirkegaard0204.pdf
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04932.pdf
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-932
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,96177,00.html
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2004&m=September&x=20040923160531MBzemoG0.2082025&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html
http://www.todaysengineer.org/aug04/offshoring.asp
http://www.nspe.org/etweb/10804viewpoint.asp
http://www.ddj.com/dept/global/189600872
http://news.com.com/Some+H-1B+workers+underpaid,+federal+auditors+say/2100-1022_3-6087367.html
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6087367.html
http://dso.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189600966
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189600936
http://www.informationweek.com/outsourcing/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189600737
http://www.gao.gov/htext/d06901t.html
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-901T
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200606.html#20060625
http://www.colosseumbuilders.com/Guild/h1b/howtounderpay.htm
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/IntelH1BWages.txt
http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=247

We always remember that the context that H-1B is in. H-1B exists within a PROTECTED labor market.

What's that thing we're building on our southern border? Something about a wall? To keep 99% of the workforce out--except programmers?

Why should programmers get to be the only exception?

It's not fair to the "best and brightest" to bring in ONLY the best and brightest. Programming should not pay exactly the same as driving a truck.

What does driving a truck pay in India? 1/10th what a programmer makes?

Then how come the US feels that truck drivers and programmers should make about the same?

H-1B, utlimately, is socialism. It is protecting the wages of the unskilled at the expense of the skilled.

The US must stop mentioning professions in its visa laws. It must stop tampering with the market, and then accuse all people who object of being anti-freemarket. Free market laws don't mention people. They don't make exceptions.

If Bill Gates wants to increase immigration, fine.

But if he wants to pass special laws that mention programmers, specifically, that's market tampering.

Millions of people who are not programmers would like to come to the US. It's time we gave them a chance, too.

As a small software business owner, I strongly disagree with the limit on H-1B Visas. The extrememly low limit on visas is having a detrimental effect on US businesses.

We are a Massachusetts based software company with our headquarters in Boston. Despite several permenent ads on software development job sites, we have been having tremendous difficulty finding enough talented software developers to fill our demand. All but one of our developers are American but one of the best developers on our team has been with us since last May on a Opt 1 Visa. Our employee has a bachelors of science in computer science from an American university. He graduated with a near 4.0 average and has received a number of awards for his performance. We tried last year to get him an H-1B visa but the limit was filled by the end May. This year we planned far in advance with our immigration lawyer to get our application in on the first day they were allowed to be accepted (yesterday April 2nd). Despite this and paying for expedited service, our lawyer just informed us that the limit for applications was reached yesterday and now a computer will randomly select which applicants will be processed. Over 150,000 applications were sent in on the first day - far surpassing the 65,00 limit. There are not enough highly skilled American workers to fill the demand. Companies like ours will be forced to outsource our work to foreign countries even though we would much prefer to keep our staff in Boston.

This problem is not just affecting large companies from Microsoft and Google, it affects small companies like ours that have to work twice as hard to attract top talent. This limit is causing the US to lose the chance to retain highly skilled workers and companies like ours to suffer. Candidates should be able to apply for a job based on their skills and experience not nationality. If the best candidate comes from India or China, he or she should get the job and the US should be happy to have won the residency of these highly skilled employees. It only makes US companies less competitive if they cannot hire the best.

the whole H-1 debate is going nowhere because everyone seems to be barking up the wrong tree...the real culprits are the Indian consulting firms who hire people on H-1B from india as well as from US universities and submit completely fake work experience in order to get projects
these companies need to be investigated and prosecuted if this mess is to be resolved