Nah see, the skills are all very specialized. BS in Electical Engineering is a degree that can qualify you for a whole ton of different jobs depending on what your concentration is and what entry-level jobs you start out workin at. Sure in just those particular government sectors you need security clearance, but I'm not talkin about security clearance jobs. You don't need a security clearance to work for Cingular or T-Mobile.

Point being, that there's a whole lot of dudes out there who are just as educated as the American citizens & greencard holders, but because they aren't a citizen or don't have a greencard, they come at half price. The H1 shop drops a one-time investment of 3 grand to buy the guy's H1 visa, and pay the dude literally half of what a citizen or greencard holder would get, and pass the savings on to the customer.

Then there's a lot of consultants who try to get jobs through companies such as mine, and the companies that represent them have less managers to put em on jobs with because of all the managers that use only H1 shops because they want to maximize their budget or something. That said, we still have plenty of business, but we'd have even more without the H1 shops.

Seems to me the situation's quite similar to something lower paying. Immigrant dude does the same job as the citizen and/or greencard holder for half price, and that means less opportunities for the people who come at full price. Drives the pay rates down for the full price people because to place em on a job with a hiring manager who's thinking about using an H1 shop, the consulting company can't be like, "yeah our guy so worth the extra 50 bucks an hour over the H1 shop's guy."

I have a pretty neutral opinion of it, the H1 shops aren't gonna go away and the H1 consultants are fully legal to be here. Companies like mine lure em from the H1 shops with higher rates, once they get that greencard.

I'd just like to know what the folks who are so morally perturbed about the illegal immigrants taking a job away because of lower pay, when the legal ones are doin it too. Maybe certain folks got a little upset because I didn't address them super politely before, but hey, I'm an asshole.