I don't have any evidence that you're not correct in general, but that's certainly not how it always works. I (British) worked for six years for Apple under the program (2001-2007), and there H1 holders - from all over the world - were treated (and hired) in exactly the same way as US employees. They just want to hire the best candidate.
Go after the abuses of the program, yes, but it's not fair to many good, valuable people in the USA on visas like this to imply (and you may not be trying to imply this, but it's the impression many people come away with) that it's all abuse.
48% of H1-B holders are from India, and another 10% are from China. IMO, it should be illegal to hire them in a capacity where they are "consultants" in a shop. This would shut down the vast majority of the abuses in the system.
I'd be the last to argue, though, that the US immigration system is a good one. It seems to tolerate any number of unskilled illegal migrants on one end, but pretty effectively bar educated, skill migration on the other. I'm no economist, but that intuitively seems to be the wrongly skewed to me.
I've come to the conclusion that the H1B operates in two parallel universes that have almost nothing to do with each other. On one side, you have companies like Apple and Google, trying to hire very talented people, often graduates of top American universities. They see it as absurd that the US would keep these workers out, and they have a point. I also believe that these companies treat their H1B workers more or less the same way they treat their US Citizen workers. There is a slight difference, of course, in that the greater restrictions on mobility do have an influence on wage negotiations and so forth, even when both parties are acting in "good faith." But all in all, when you look at this first universe, you wonder why people are complaining about the visa - in fact, it's so baffling that you start to wonder if the complainers are just "xenophobes".
On the other extreme, you have extremely abusive "body shops" where employers think nothing of threatening to revoke a visa to manipulate a worker. I think that many people who work for the first universe were a little shocked to discover that the biggest recipients of the H1B visa are generally overseas outsourcing companies.
If you're interested in reading more about serious abuses of the system, I'd recommend reading some of Ron Hira's work (a public policy professor at Rochester) - he did an interview on NPR a while back where he discussed some of the really outrageous cases (some H1B recipients were paid less than $9/hr and met the "prevailing wage" requirement... how on earth can this be happening with a visa designed to remedy shortages of "critical, highly skilled and educated workers"? And how is it that google is running out of visas when we're allocating them to companies paying such low wages!)
It's fubar. The US badly needs a solution, but there are so many competing interests that it's difficult to find a common ground. There is some outright xenophobia. There are people who don't really like immigration, and want to limit it wherever they can. There are companies that want to lay off their entire IT department and replace it with non-citizen workers who can't negotiate their wages. There are engineers who feel positive about immigration in general but resent a specific program specifically brings in more engineer, on the grounds that there is no greater a "shortage" in engineering than any other field, at least when you consider wage growth. There are people who support very liberal immigration policies and figure more is better. There are people who think it's crazy to tell graduates of top STEM programs that they aren't allowed to stay. Some people say that we should staple a green card to every graduate degree in a STEM field (but interesting, not to every law degree or MBA, degrees that are more popular with Americans...)
Unfortunately, the result is stalemate and a program that nobody likes, but everyone uses, because how else are you going to do this You work with the system you have.
My own opinion is that we should make every effort to keep and attract top talent to the US in all fields, but we also need to be aware that the market distortions of visas targeting specific types of workers can, if we're not careful, end up deterring Americans from entering specific fields (creating a self-enforcing cycle of "shortages"). I think we can balance this with good legislation (and the countries that "solve" it will have a big competitive advantage over everyone else), but it's a tall order considering the many angry and conflicting interests around this issue.
Oh, no way. I'm a H1B holder myself, but I'm just saying that there is a LOT of abuse of the visa going on.
I have some amount of sympathy for the consulting companies as well. I've seen cases where my friends got CS degrees from University of Pennsylvania, who I know are very good, but can't find a job right out of college. (The day your degree is done, the US policy is to kick you out unless you get an intern with some company or a H1B sponsorship. No grace period.). At this point, you're forced to go to the consultancies, get trained in whatever enterprisey tech stack, fake your resume and then accept whatever ridiculous terms the companies throw at you, work for them for a couple of years and move on once you have your foot in the door.
So.. all I'm saying is the policy needs some change .. I'm just agreeing with my parent that it needs to be easier for grads from US universities.
A significant portion of the program is abuse. If you look at the total number of H1Bs issued (several Million), vs the the number of H1Bs working in "top 100 or 1000" companies like Apple, Google, MS, AMZN etc, what remains is the vast majority who got H1Bs through body shops or out sourcing companies.
Many H1B holders start with shady companies but eventually move to better places. Not sure if that's always a good thing.
Go after the abuses of the program, yes, but it's not fair to many good, valuable people in the USA on visas like this to imply (and you may not be trying to imply this, but it's the impression many people come away with) that it's all abuse.