>>106266689
>wrong foundation
It was fine before the turn of the century. The Dot Com boom and bubble was the start of the end. Though the H1B program was introduced in 1991, initially it was used as intended, bringing in a small number of specialists to work temporarily until a local worker could be trained up. The Dot Com boom gave them justification for wholesale importation of generalists to make up a bulk of workers.
Once the tech world had a taste of cheap labor, it never was willing to go back the way things were. That's also when they got interested in lobbying the government to keep the cheap labor flowing. Early issues of Wired commented on how little interest Silicon Valley and the tech industry had in politics, especially national politics. DC might as well have been on a different planet. It wasn't 100% their newly found cheap labor addiction as the Microsoft antitrust trial also spooked the industry, but when Microsoft got a soft tap on the wrist as punishment, that factor was reduced.
