Please stop using it.
Image the following thought experiment. Assume that tomorrow morning every H1-B worker poof vanished. Then, on the assumption of egregiously wrong, zero of those positions in this hypothetical world could or would be filled by a single individual of the 204 million working population of US. If egregiously wrong then 60K to 85K good well paying middle class salaried positions would sit begging, unfulfilled and unfillable.
If egregiously correct, than most of those positions would be filled. Care to quantify your belief of "egregious wrongness" by stating how many of those positions you in fact believe can not and will not get filled?
Some of those positions would be filled - eventually. Some of the jobs would be farmed out to other countries.
Also, the people that depend on the custom of those workers (say a bunch of them are from India and eat at a local Indian restaurant as a simple thought experiment) would suffer as well.
The economy is not a zero-sum game.
The first order effect difference: I claim effectively all of those positions could and would be filled. The "this is egregiously wrong" position claims that effectively none of those well paid jobs would be filled. I know why people will proactively seek a well paying job. I am not able to follow the position that no one will bother to seek those positions at all. Seems at odds with basic human motives to me.
With regard to the alluded second order effects, multiplier effects.
Consider the Disney situation where "about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India."[1]
Sure the local Indian restaurant will prosper. But that is 250 households whose kids can longer afford to go to college. 250 home purchases vs 250 apartment rentals (folks on 2-3 yr visa rent not buy in general). So on and so forth.
On the surface, to me, 250 middle class families with well paying IT positions spins off far more positive effects than what we have now which is 250 US families with significant if not total household income loss, on unemployment etc. In no way is this compensated by having 250, lower paid, immigrants on temporary H1-B visas (again NYTimes phrasing). I see a net-net huge loss, others seem to see a net-net huge win.
[1] Quoted from NYTimes.
Because it's completely impossible for any of these people to find another decent job?
Sorry, don't buy it. I've been through companies folding and so on, and I have a better job than I did then.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-c... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-edison-layoffs-2015021...
Nobody suggested that the probability of at least one of these people getting a decent job down the road is zero.
A huge percentage of them in their 40s, 50s will not get anything even close. Please take some time to become familiar with ageism in the IT industry to understand why this is the case.
What is it that you don't buy? Exactly.
That they didn't really lose their jobs? That they were not really replaced that by the temporary immigrants on H1-B visas that they trained? That most of them didn't find better paying jobs within the week after being laid off? That many of these families will not suffer a huge drop in living standard?
There's even a good market for developers over 40 - that includes me - even though there are some places where people prefer youth and energy to experience.