If it costs $5,000 - 10,000 more to hire an American, so be it. The company gets an individual of native culture, native English speaker and a fellow countryman. Plus they are at least within 3 hours based on time-zone - minus Alaska and Hawaii.
So be it to who? The simple phenomenon of outsourcing shows that getting a "fellow countryman" isn't worth such a drastically higher cost to many clients. Yes, hiring people from the Indian subcontinent has burned many clients, but after getting burned they are often more likely to look towards Eastern Europe, where we are "close enough", than to hire North Americans at that much higher cost.
Time zone isn't so important, inasmuch as many freelancers in Europe are happy to adapt to North American hours.
