The problem is that skill and salary don't correlate as much as it should. As bad as we are at taxing negative externalities, we're terrible at rewarding positive externalities.

As it is we are bringing in folks on H1Bs who appear to be borderline first level customer support (this was something I ran into browsing the online DB a while back).

At least at 120k you know that the company involved really does value this employee to some extent. They're not likely to spend 120k on someone easily hired locally for far less.

They can but clearly that isn't the case.

You've never spoken with someone in a call center who clearly wasn't in the US? Or dealt with coders or a team in a country other than the US?

I've found both experiences to be pretty common.

I'm very familiar with outsourcing.

I'm not sure where you're going with it. The existence of outsourcing isn't something I thought we were confused about.

If you restrict people from coming to the US, it's likely to drive outsourcing, because computer work is very easy to ship around the world.