As far as the US IT industry, employers' thinking is the only thinking that counts. Don't wait for any "signs" supporting your reasonable ideas until employers are forced to consider these options.
Norman Matloff has done a lot of this thinking, but he is still may be flying below the radar screen of anyone outside the community of affected people.
His approach seems to be three-fold:
1. debunk the claims of pro-immigration industry groups (i.e. nobody is the U.S. can perform these jobs) 2. explain how things really are ( HB1 visa holders are akin to indentured servants; many capable technical workers are forced out around age 40; current employment law is artfully bypassed) 3. propose solutions ( retraining, legislative change, insist on corporate truthfulness, enforcement of existing laws etc.)
Check him out for yourself, though:
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/Index.html http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/ImmigAndComputerIndustry/SVReport.html
For a view from people in the affected community at Intel, check out:
http://www.faceintel.com/foreignstudents.htm
Again, I don't think faceintel has much visiblility yet.
Collective bargaining to offset corporate advantage seems like a great free-market/open society response to me. Friday's Wall Street Journal, page A4, reports on a small collective bargaining unit formed at Microsoft.
Chris