Wall Street Journal: For foreign workers given special visas, dot-com bust hits hard. But in a slowing economy, demand for skilled technology workers is waning. In February, employers applied for 16,000 H-1B visas, compared with 32,000 the previous February.
You have to feel empathy for the people who came to the U.S. with the promise of jobs that paid better than what they could make in their homelands. The American technology industry and the “job shops” that made — and broke — all their promises were living down to the worst expectations of people who believe capitalism should occasionally employ moral means.
But we should feel mostly contempt for the politicians — Congress and presidents — that have allowed itself to be steamrollered by tech executives who never faced an actual shortage of competent workers. They did have a shortage of extremely talented young people who were willing to work 80 hours a week for compensation that turned out to be mostly illusory stock options.
It wasn’t just little investors who got skinned in the deflation of the tech bubble. Quite a few workers did, too.