I hire people who would be considered "STEM," but as mentioned below, this will drive down the wage my employees can get. I oppose this bill for other reasons too – but since my startup is too small, so I can't apply for H1B visa workers, I can't recruit outside the US anyway.

I care about my employees and at this stage I can afford to pay them above market rates. I don't have any trouble holding on to them, though occasionally life interferes – one employee moved for personal reasons.

These big companies that donated to the Obama campaign – "Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe" are called out in the article – if they are having trouble hiring highly educated employees while their profits are measured in billions, would they please consider offering a raise to their current employees?

I'd be surprised if they could demonstrate they raised their salary by 50% and were still unable to fill their open positions. Yes, I know that many companies consider salary one of their biggest cost centers, but I believe that misses the essential feature of hiring an employee: they become part of the company. Employees are compensated with cash; stockholders are compensated other ways. Especially in a large, profitable software company, it isn't _actually_ hard to pay your employees above average rates.