“It doesn’t matter whether an H-1B takes the job here that you would have taken or, on the other hand, if the job is sent overseas. Either way, you as an American programmer or engineer, [don’t] have that job,” Matloff said, comparing the visas to the controversial practice of outsourcing American jobs to other countries.

“It’s not any different than what illegal aliens have done to construction workers,” said Kim Berry, the webmaster of two sites that almost exclusively address the influx of foreign workers in the U.S. IT job market. “Why hire an American to do the roofing when you can have a truckload of illegals do it for $30 per day each?”