And why would foreign engineers agree to work for 25% of what Americans are making, given they will have the same expenses or more?
1 - It's more than they can make in their third world economy back home.
2 - They
don't have the same expenses. Often times they will "bunk up," often in what the average American would consider substandard housing conditions, often times in violation of housing laws of maximum occupancy.
3 - They can spend a year living in a hobbit hole and still save a good portion of their money, then turn around at the end of the year and take that money back home with them, which converts into their economy to 10 years or more worth of average income.
Oh, I know it's coming....you're going to tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about. Guess again, buddy boy. My girlfriend has been doing this for the past five years already. She comes here, often works under the table (one time she had a cash job for $7/hr, and was putting in 50 hrs a week with no overtime pay), lives in a crappy two bedroom place with
seven friends from back home, and saves her money. After a few months of working two jobs, she goes back home to Romania, and sits on the $8-10k she made. Seeing as an average monthly salary in Romania equates to about $500 USD, she can sit on what she made in the course of a summer, and not work at all for the rest of the year. She's now in the US for her 5th year in a row, and expects to be able to buy a house when she returns back home again this fall (though she's not sure she actually wants to buy it).