<p>As much as we talk about H1-B’s, tho, the trick is to ask how many US workers would put off golf for a weekend or three and study on their own time and dime to learn the new stuff. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s a lot of new stuff came along (n-tier, .NET, SAP, web development) and in the mid 2000’s+ another lot of new stuff came along (ETL, data mining, reporting) and the last couple years yet another lot (Big Data, Analytics, Cloud). </p>
<p>H-1B’s won big because of actual working experience (or ‘experience’) with said technologies and super low cost of training back home. Go take a series of SAP classes and see what money we’re talking about vs. taking them in Farawaystan. Is it any surprise that the only very decent book on Informatica is written by an Indian Professor and can only be mail ordered from India? (a prized possession of Mrs. T :)). </p>
<p>Maybe there’s a learning moment here for US workers, yea, it’s nice to play golf every weekend or ballroom dancing or what not, but at some point COBOL is not going to cut it, and on the job or employer paid training went the way of the dodo bird. Do a Google of ‘Informatica Interview Questions’ and see what I’m talking about. Without prepping like you’re going to the Olympics it’s a lost cause.</p>