Jesus christ. Another H1B circle jerk
Before you all pick up your pitchforks, understand what H1B exactly does.
There are 2 types of people on H1B. 1) Contractors directly flown in from abroad, who are yes, paid less because the contracting company gets a big share of the money. Even in this case, there are some jobs which are very specialized and some people are flown from abroad for that. But 90% of people coming in to the country this way do take away american jobs. I agree.
2) The other kind is people who have come to the US, have got advanced american STEM degrees from American universities and are working here. They are paid as much as anyone.
In my opinion H1B will eventually move to this. People with advanced STEM degrees from American universities can get H1B if they can get a job where the company is willing to sponsor. These people are paid as much as americans and is a lot of over head paperwork and extra visa cost for companies. So they hire only if they have specific skillset. Even if you are foreign student graduating with a PhD from Stanford, you are on H1B.
I will be honest here. I am one of the people who came to the US for masters, got my masters in STEM and now working on H1B in bay area. In my field, my job you NEED a masters minimum. You just cannot do this job without atleast a masters. My company is into a very specific AI/Vision based robotics and every single one in my team has atleast a masters from top 5 universities in the US and almost 40% of my team has a PhD. Are we taking american's jobs? I dont think so. There are just not enough american students in american grad schools doing very niche STEM courses. My team sometimes has to look for candidates for months to find one. I have interviewed people for internships and everyone I interview has 2-3 other offers. A 24 year old new college grad (with a masters I mean) makes 120k minimum because all hires bargain aggressively.
With the increase in these contractors coming in from outside, and the H1B circle jerk, several of my colleagues from colleges of the likes of berkeley and stanford have not got H1Bs even after 2 attempts and the company just cannot afford to lose these people and look for others again. These folks are now working from Canada, India and Europe because they cant get US visa.
You need to select your outrage at people coming directly from India, with normal skillset which can be found in America. H1B is pain for entrepreneurs. I know several super sharp guys who got kickass stem degrees who are waiting to start tech companies in the silicon valley, but are not able to because H1B doesnt allow you to start your own company. Even one of the co founders of Instagram had this problem.http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-cofounder-mike-krieger-had-an-h1b-visa-problem-2015-4
Now, from last few years, because of a surge of off-shore contractors applying for american visas to get here, even people who studied in the US are not getting visas and companies like google, apple and facebook are tired of this stalemate. Google recently bought a fuckton of office space in India and is hiring people with American PhDs and Masters in India because getting them a visa here has become a pain. And a guy with a PhD probably would have wanted 160k in the US but google can pay him 80k in India and that is a fuckload of money in India. I know many people who have gone out that way. Apple is opening their first R&D development center outside US in India. They are offering american educated grads to move back for a lot of money. Many are ok with that as they dont have to spend on H1B limbo and wait for green cards for 5-7 years.
Thanks to the stupid H1B policy, america is losing very high paying niche jobs. If you thought losing manufacturing jobs was bad for the economy, wait till you start losing hi tech R&D jobs. All this because the government and the people who are against H1B treat high tech H1Bs and off-shore contractors the same.