One of the ways to do that is asking the government to ease the inmigration policies for programmers.
I'm not sure that will help at all, since the only mechanism the government has to evaluate a programmer is whether or not they already have a job with a local company, and if they do then the company will sort their visa anyway.
To be truly meritocratic, we'd need a means to not only allow but attract engineers (of all sorts) based on talent. At the moment a mediocre engineer from a country that has historical ties with us will find it easier to immigrate than an excellent engineer from a country that doesn't. Which seems a bit counterproductive to me.
If there is a lot of whining about a shortage but that isn't showing up in cold hard cash then all we have is a management class trying to drive down the wages of the workers.