there's a difference between hiring a team offshore, that stays offshore, and hiring h1b developers to move here. The first is global economy, the second can be detrimental to keeping jobs within america, especially when we actually do have many perfectly fine and able engineers losing their jobs simply because others are willing to work for half of their pay.

The H1-B abuse the OP is talking about has nothing to do with hiring better people from other countries, I don't think many people argue that - the problem is just trying to replace perfectly fine engineering teams which live here with cheaper engineering teams. And we're not talking the difference between $150k developer who is from the US and a $130k one that is brought in from elsewhere, we're talking about being able to pay WAY under market, perhaps even half market rates - that's the issue.