I take no issue with people that are passionate about education trying to make a programming curriculum and promote it. Far from it. But when you have politicians and high ranking business officers beating the drum it does become suspicious. Visas are already abused to manipulate the labor market. And now they want to create even more cheap labor domestically.

Also, it is not as if there are huge barriers to learning to program. Anybody that can type a google query can get started. All the tools and knowledge needed are at your fingertips for a sufficiently interested person. As many in this thread have pointed out, they started from nothing, learned on their own for a year or two, and landed a gig.

To me I can't escape the feeling that well monied interests are working their hardest to ruin one of the last good, well paying careers.