2003 was the year I stopped being able to find work in my own field. That’s a personal claim, not a data point — so this report keeps the two separate. What BLS’s own numbers show: women’s labor force participation peaked in April 2000 and, as of August 2026, sits below where it was in 1990. The H-1B cap was tripled to 195,000 a year right as the dot-com bust hit U.S. tech workers, and GAO itself was flagging the tracking gap in a report published in September 2003. And from a $34 million DOJ settlement with Infosys in 2013 through a $3.2 million one with OpenAI in August 2026 — plus an ongoing federal jury finding against Cognizant and an active caste-discrimination case against Cisco — the paper trail of companies found to have preferred visa holders over Americans keeps growing.