Exactly. Whenever business leaders moan about 'shortages', they say "We can't find Americans to do the job" when they mean "We can't find Americans to do the job at the shitty wage we want to pay"
Pretty sure this is demonstrably false. There are large spreadsheets out there documenting H1B wages at FAANG type companies and they are almost universally less than the equivalent US Citizen wages.
Those self-reporting spreadsheets aren't worth the paper they're not printed on.
FAANG companies are not hiring H1-B's because it's cheaper. I have been a hiring manager at a couple of FAANG companies, and I can tell you it's just not something we cared about.
The only thing I cared about was finding the most qualified people for the team. I had headcount to fill, and it wasn't like that headcount had one salary band marked "For Citizens" and another marked "For H1-Bs". The compensation systems at FAANGs are for the most part formulaic.
If FAANG want cheap engineering labor they outsource and use contractors, simple as. And it's those companies - the Infosys and Wipros of the world - that are arguably are the biggest abusers of H1-B.
I've been on that list before. Here are some truths for that for which I have ground truth to compare to (my W-2):
* It's base alone - no bonus, no stock
* It's base at the time you get on the visa - so mine was two years and some 80k out of date near the end
* My employer at the time used a standard letter for the four or so of us so we all have the same base listed but I know we didn't have the same base. It looks like it was the lowest value. Presumably they just kept the thing that was working.
And it's not a race thing, it's a money thing. Hong Kong Chinese don't want paltry wages so they import Filipinos. Lebanese don't want paltry wages so they import Sri Lankans. Even black South Africans don't want paltry wages to they import Zimbabweans.
H1Bs aren't stupid are they're not exactly desperate for work opportunities either.