Will the Last Native-Born Software Developer Turn Off the Lights?

Good news.

This isn't copypasta, this actually happened over the past year at my company. Several other companies in the area are experiencing similar issues with their visas.

I'm an IT guy, a developer to be exact. I've been around the H1B issue for about 20 years and things have always gotten worse, never better. Despite Trump's fantastic rhetoric during the campaign, I didn't believe he'd make any real changes or fix anything. However, what I've seen over the past year demonstrates this is definitely not true.

My development team is probably 90 percent indian. The manager of our department is indian and the hiring managers are all indian and they have all stated pretty openly that they prefer hiring indians. Whenever there are layoffs, non-indians get cut. Whenever there is hiring, more indians get brought on board. They get paid about 40k a year less than I do, they work hard and they don't complain. I think they produce garbage quality work for the most part, but I don't think the managers care. It's slowly rotting away the quality of the software but again, they don't care.

Anyway, the typical scenario is that every year, a stack of visas goes in for renewal and about a week later they come back stamped [APPROVED]. Very easy. At the start of this year, instead of coming back approved, each application came back with a huge list of questions and requests for documentation about why the applicants were being paid so little. The lawyers were confused and assembled a huge pile of documentation for each applicant and sent it back. Every single application then came back with either more questions or a denial. EVERY SINGLE ONE is either in limbo or denied (you must go back!). I've heard this from multiple sources, including several who had their visas held up.

As a result of this, our company's HR department has quietly decided (I heard this through the grapevine talking to several department heads) to no longer hire employees that need sponsorship. I've talked with recruiters and with people I know in several other companies in the area and I've heard similar stories everywhere. Pretty much unless you're making 120k a year on a visa, you're going to get yanked. The guys like WIPRO and INFOSYS must be shitting their pants over this.

And salaries for developers are already rising as a result. Salaries have been stagnant for several years but in Q4 2017, they started going up noticeably in this area. Trump is truly making IT great again.