[klipt]

> The idea usually is that the presence of an H1B means that someone local does not exist to do the job, which means that a company would otherwise have to pay more than the going rate to poach someone else from another company. Then the company losing the employee has to pay more to poach from somewhere else, and so on, until eventually everyone who is suitable for such a position is making more.

In simple economic terms, yes, supply and demand exist, and if you reduce the supply of software engineers their salary will go up. However, canning the H1-B program is only one way to reduce supply. One could also limit the number of computer science degrees granted by US universities, and that would increase software engineer wages too. Is such protectionism justified? Probably not. But a lot of people seem to take an "ends justifies the means" approach when arguing against immigration.