[8note]

isnit right to call it abuse?

certain employers can use h1bs to fill specific employment needs really well, and have a ton of experience with both sourcing foreign labour and matching it to work that needs doing in the US.

its doing exactly what the program is looking for, filling a labour quantity at the price employers are looking for.

The US government is optimizing for being able to do some volume of technical work, and the the h1 is intended to make sure that the industry isnt limited by labour availability. its not particularly abusive to do that in an efficient way where the same h1b can serve many businesses

the alternative thats coming is going to be moving a lot of the work to india and instead having the local engineers be liasons for where the real work is happening

people in india havw to wait long periods because the green card system of country limits has no per capita normalization, not because of h1 visa abuse. its sheer volume of good people working for american companies in america, wanting to stay in america. Your anti-abuse metrics will bring it down from 15 years to 13 or 14. not a meaningful difference

[jmyeet]

Nothing will convince me that the likes of Tata and Infosys are a good use of H1Bs. And because they flood the system with H1B applications, other actually valuable positions go unfilled.

If the customers for these bodyshops could save money by outsourcing directly to India, they would've already.

And beyond those big bodyshops you have any number of smaller H1B fraud schemes eg [1][2][3][4].

If you're Indian-born and are waiting 10-15+ years for your green card then you should be mad about these companies because they're making your life more difficult.

> The US government is optimizing for being able to do some volume of technical work, and the the h1 is intended to make sure that the industry isnt limited by labour availability

First, I disagree with this claim. The US government is optimizing to suppress wages.

Second, when there's significant unemployment in the sector then there is by definition availability. It further goes to my argument that the main purpose is to suppress wages.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/east-bay-men-plead-guil...

[2]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/h-1b-visa-fraud...

[3]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/executives-staffing-compa...

[4]: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/sunnyvale-man-to-serve-1...

[kevin_thibedeau]

> If the customers for these bodyshops could save money by outsourcing directly to India, they would've already.

I worked for a company that did this. They had no H1Bs but did have an Indian subsidiary. The problem is you only get the third tier workers who can't make it into the body shops. Plus you have to deal with the time disparity.

[bubblethink]

>when there's significant unemployment in the sector then there is by definition availability

Humans aren't fungible.