A program written with good intentions and positive results, left unchecked and unmodified through decades and corporations not only learn how to abuse the system, but really as with any industry learn they almost need to abuse the system to keep pace with the competition. 85K H1-B's granted a year, large corporations that are highly competitive, what the fuck happens when a loophole is found and remains unchecked, when a regulation is unenforced and everyone knows it?

This is the shit our government should be focused on.

As a former H1B recipient I'll disagree with this statement, since my employer at the time used it as a tool to hire specific skills from all around the world with the intent to have them also get a green card. So my employer was happy to pay the entire cost of H1B and Green Card fully understanding that in theory I could leave as soon as I had my green card in hand. My career path and salary were on par with the Americans / green card holders, because the visa status was not a consideration per HR policy. (I'm not in IT but materials science).

Of course it is. The fact that some are going to outsourcing companies doesn't mean that all of them are. Do you even know many employees/employers at Google/Facebook/Apple or dozens of other tech companies? Listen to the folks here (and everywhere) who have day-to-day experience.

Some of them yes. But not the majority and that is the point. There are more people than just you with day to day experience. And it is that very day to day experience that encourages us to think the program needs changed. We are clearly seeing a different side of this than you are. You are apparently seeing very good employees, some of us are seeing very low level low skilled workers taking jobs that any newly graduated college student from any college could perform. This isn't just the most advanced companies in Silicon Valley using people here on H1's.

Check out this list: http://www.business-standard.com/...-117013101018_1.html

The top 7 have something in common, and it isn't having mostly MIT grads.

Someone above said we should ask why we would be against this. Here is why. I like immigrants. But I like immigrants that want to stay in the US and want to keep their wealth in the US. If a Guatemalan wants to move to the US and work and live and stay here, I want them here. H1's that don't progress to labor cert and don't intend to go through the process aren't staying here and aren't keeping their skills and wealth here. It is going back to India for the most part.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Thanks for the numbers. Using them it appears that 30-40% of H-1B visas are going to foreign outsourcing companies (don't have the complete numbers, but it is pretty easy to extrapolate). Down the list ,there are hundreds of tech companies hiring smaller numbers of H-1B workers at full salary.

BTW, it isn't at all inappropriate to have a smaller percentage of H-1B's going to top talent from other countries, as long as salary parity and worker's rights are supported. The MIT grad is merely a slam-dunk example.

The H-1B exists because US companies need way more tech employees than we have in the US. Companies being what they are, they have taken the cheaper shortcut of outsourcing, it makes sense to reform the policy, so that some level of salary parity is enforced. If that reform happens, of course, it is quite possible that companies which are searching for cheaper tech workers will simply move out. God, don't you love capitalism!

BTW, a CFO friend summed up Silcon Valley a few weeks ago, "We are strip mining the human capital of the world."

My company hired a bunch of people from India from one of those companies listed. And it wasn't because they couldn't find people. In fact, they didn't renew domestic contract, backfill or hire new people in lieu of hiring people from these countries. The guy next to me was let go on the last day of his contract because they filled the position with a cheaper person from india.

My specific work must be done by a US citizen, but a lot of people under my VP are worried they can be replaced for cheaper people.

So I think you have a very absolute view of this that isn't the norm outside of your area of work. It is definitely abused, and I work for a fortune 50 company.

I was the hiring manager for the development team of a professional services firm. Over the course of 11 years I've interviewed hundreds of H1B's most aren't qualified and in a few cases were not who they claimed to be. Because of budget restrictions we rarely got any resumes from anyone who wasn't an H1B. Those non-H1B's we did get were the bottom of the barrel type of people who are always bouncing from one place to the next and not for the good reasons.

My particular company wouldn't "sponsor" the visa, as the process would have been overwhelming for the small HR dept. I found out from a few people that worked for me, that the staffing company that we paid their hourly rate to, didn't hold their visa. Another third party held the visa and that they had to pay both staffing companies a percentage of the total hourly rate. So a guy that was billing say 75 dollars an hour for mid level software development was taking home less than 40 dollars an hour. The intimidation tactics that can be used on these folks to keep them in-line is close to indentured servitude in some cases as they're scared to death that the company holding their visa will yank it and they'll get sent back to India.

Hmm, I am mostly saying that there are abuses, but pushing back against a host of people hinting and saying that "all" H-1B visas are abused. ("it has been taken over by large Corporations who are 100% abusing it. "). The larger question, which has remained unanswered by everybody (except jpo) is, given a curbing of abuses, what should the overall visa level be?

I think that somebody here defined it well when they said the system as original passed was well designed but situations change and smart businesss find ways to benefit themselves in the existing rules over time.