This guy linked to the IEEE Spectrum article, but I don't think he read it, because they address the issue about defining STEM workers, and despite his anecdotal evidence, they came to the conclusion that, yes, the STEM shortage is a myth.
There is no shortage of STEM graduates. There is a shortage of people actually capable of doing the jobs which, amongst other things, require a STEM background. And for most software development jobs, the latter isn't even the most important qualification.
The STEM shortage is a myth created by people who want to deny that there is a shortage of qualified knowledge workers by equating "qualified" to having a STEM degree.
Nobody actually in the business ever complained about a STEM shortage. We complain about a shortage of competent people.
As an aside, software development is one of the most internally brutal and self-critical industries out there. We tend to consider anyone outside the top 20% to be entirely, unredeemably incompetent. It creates a huge drive in our industry to keep getting better, but I do wonder if the d* measuring contest might be holding us back at the same time. The ridiculously competitive nature of our field has already been attributed to unintended consequences like blocking out women and older people. I personally was drawn to the field due to its competitiveness, but I do wonder if sometimes we let "perfect" be the enemy of "good".
The trouble is, in software, single individuals in that top 20% are capable of doing things in a short time that individuals from the bottom 80% couldn't do in 1000 man years. Software is funny like that, some people can think different kinds of thoughts.
So in a way, for certain values of incompetent, this is actually true.
If there were a shortage of talented basketball players, it wouldn't matter how many copies of myself you were able to get into basketball training programs, you'd never get an MJ. We need a better system to find MJ's of STEM and allow their talent to work for us.
Yes, they have, to the point where legislation is being considered to award green cards specifically to recipients of MS or PhD degrees in STEM fields.
http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issues_STEM%20Jobs%20Act.h...
I completely agree with you that STEM should be a red herring. But it's hard to say that a focus on STEM is circumventing the issue when the notion of a shortage of STEM degrees is specifically built into the proposed legislation.