Microsoft will not fire foreign workers first

One thing you'll find about most American companies is that profits come first. For the average employee they don't care what you are, they just care about how much money you can make them. Plus they understand the repercussions of protectionism, which apparently that politician didn't. However, if you're a CEO and you're losing billions of dollars, it's ok.

If they didn't wouldn't the foreign workers then be legally entitled to launch a class action suit against microsoft for discrimination?

Also, foreign workers cost less and are better educated than Americans....

This is a total violation of Human Rights. This is not American Value. At some time or another, all of us here are immigrants/refugees with the exception of Native American. I am so disappointed with this overall suggestions. What happened to the capitalist and innovative ideas? We need the best of the best here in the US. By the way, many of the technologies and scientists are foreigners. People should ask the CIA, and they will be able to tell you why US government didn't want to disclose it. This is going to lead to racism again in America. We should only award the best in America. Give credits to the foreigners. Again, this is a total human right violation, and that's the reason other countries are not willing to listen to us anymore.

When the purpose of the H1B process is to have lower cost foreign engineers/programmers employed over higher priced citizens it isn't unbiased. It is extremely biased economically! There are many forms of bias. Instead they role out the race issue and say how unbiased they are ... on race, and how biased we are.

That crap is why most programmers here are loving the Open Source movement and what it is doing to the likes of MS.

Write an app today and give it away!

Most US Americans can't even spell "foreigners", am I right Ken?

"Also, foreign workers cost less and are better educated than Americans...."

Sure they cost less, considerably less - that is why they are so desirable to the big companies.

Better educated? Hardly in the technical world. In general the mass high school dropouts in the US (and the liberal dumbed-down curriculum of those who do "pass", but hey, they feel better about themselves when they fail, so its not all a lost cause) bring the US avg down, but in general the colleges are significantly better than anything in India, Mexico, or China (although there is improvement).

Give me one US college educated worker over three of four from either Mexico, India, or China. That doesn't mean those workers cannot learn and be as productive, so to anyone who's about to cry racism - as the INQ would put it - go forth and multiply.

HB

If the number of H1B workers at Microsoft will remain the same, doesn't that mean they won't be firing *any* foreign workers?

So much for the argument that they need H1B visas because there aren't enough Americans to fill those jobs.

The truth is, there aren't enough Americans *willing to work for 3rd world pay* to fill those jobs.

That said, simple-minded protectionism is not the answer. Microsoft competes world-wide. American workers will have to do the same. At least it's time we chucked out the politicians who think their first job is the well-being of Corporations and not people.

I worked in high-tech for the last ten years, surrounded by H1 people who not only got paid as well as Americans, but actually worked harder because they didn't have a sense of entitlement. I'd hire H1 people not to save money (there are rules about that, many abide by them), but because they actually tend to be as well educated, smarter (try to move to a foreign country before you object), and very very dedicated. Cherry on the cake, they don't waste March talking about basketball...

Because taking a coffee break every two hours and standing around the "watercooler" talking about soccer is a superior waste of time.
I'm not against H1Bs, I can hold my own against them just fine, thank you, and I'd rather have the jobs in the US.
What I am against the bigoted assumption that Americans are idiots. Some of them work quite hard. American culture does allow more "laziness", but any lost work tends to be made up by certain advantages of the culture:
if it doesn't make sense, you don't do it, you reuse where it makes and and where it makes sense only, you don't need extremely rigid task boundaries in order to work on a task with other people. Basically, American culture still works because it gives you incentive to work smarter, not harder.
But I work with plenty of American and H1B co-workers, and I don't see a big competitive difference. Take your bigotry elsewhere.

"It added that the number of foreign workers on H1-B visas will remain approximately the same"

So Microsoft are being biased because as you see they will only be laying off Americans and keeping foreign staff!

Maybe check the surnames of all "YOUR" greatest scientists qst and then talk bollocks.....
Lets see... Americans like Einstein or Tesla or some chun yun fats.... ho ho ho dumbass Yanks

Ross Perot warned American workers about this race to the bottom. H1B is about pitting the American worker against the cheapest foreign worker. The outcome is rigged.