Comment by itake
4 hours ago
1/ Training goes all the way down the pipeline to colleges. If x% of students are foreign, then Americans didn't have the opportunity to get the education.
Again... the skill issue falls apart when you consider teams at tech companies having 1 non-American national origin or caste. I'm very skeptical that, between two foreign candidates with the same U.S. education and experience but different national origins, the fact that the candidate whose nationality matches the current team composition is selected can be explained purely as a matter of skill.
2/ Great, lets train up more American engineers to push the demand higher.
People are not as capable as you think they are and software engineering (well) is actually difficult. You cannot just push more people in. People are not fungible.
There is truth to your statement, but high salaries and demand encourage locally capable people to enter the industry.
Consider growth of CS graduates in the past 5 years or the number of people that transitioned into tech (like myself).
In 2026, this signal is not as clear: with the uncertainty of tech, increased output with less labor due to AI, and growing competition amongst workers (citizen or otherwise). We may see a shift in studies to other fields.