H1B visas are in theory intended to be awarded only when there is a shortage of some specialized labor and it is not possible to find enough qualified candidates within the country. If a person hired under that premise ends up making a “pretty normal” wage it’s a pretty clear sign that the process is being abused.

I'm fully supportive of massively more immigration - I believe it's a net economic positive and a moral imperative.

At the same time, if a program is designed to bring in 'exceptional talent' but is really just importing mediocre drones from a single country, that's not really serving the purpose of the program.

Let's fix H1Bs and then work on more equitable ways to allow other forms of beneficial immigration.

As a data point, a consultancy I used to work for competed directly with Infosys, Tata, and other H1B shops for tech contracts (mostly BA and PM work). I can personally guarantee you that hourly rates were artificially reduced as a result at multiple companies, which negatively impacted salaries and bonuses of American workers.

Keep in mind that most economic analyses of this topic ignore the direct competition aspect of the contract labor market impacted by H1Bs and instead focus on salaried FTEs at the businesses that contractors provide services to.

H1B here myself but someone who moved here during one of the years that had surprisingly lax demand for H1B visas. I moved here for a startup as the first engineer with a pay much lower than what I could have gotten in the market. It was purely because there was no demand for H1B that year that I got in. Every year since then has been the top 3 Indian companies stuffing the applications. However, the current rule change would shift the balance from consultancies to big tech companies. Startups do need talent too and there are people like me who are willing to take a pay cut in exchange for a reasonable equity. The winners of this rule change would be big tech companies - not necessarily the US in general.

What the US needs is a point based system with automatic green card in x number of years. This would allow the government to prioritize "desirable qualities" (education, age, salary and whatever you want to optimize for) and balance them out (e.g, I could get points for my education instead of my salary and still qualify). The automatic green card option would then open up the employees to work anywhere they want instead of the company that sponsored them thereby preventing wage suppression.

H1B and immigration shouldn't be used interchangeably. I think immigration should be easier, but I highly doubt that when the company I work for uses hires junior web developers with H1B visas for low pay based on the area, that they couldn't find a single native to fill the position, especially since it's always been a fully remote position.

> there are many proper economic analyses that show that native-born workers benefit from immigration

I actually read through two of the "proper economic analyses" in that reddit link since I am interested in this.

One of them wasn't an economic analysis but a summary article: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/contributions-high-.... Almost all of this article is talking about all of the problems with trying to identify the net effects of immigration and how difficult it is.

It has quotes that directly refute what you are saying such as:

"Immigration has complex, sometimes ambiguous impacts on natives. The benefits to the US economy from high-skilled immigration can be accompanied by negative effects for certain groups of natives and positive effects for other groups." Which is the opening summary of the section on effect on natives. Also,

"Borjas found that a 10 percent increase of immigrants with PhDs in a certain field lowered the wages of native born graduating with doctorates in those same fields around the same time by 3 percent"

"Researchers have also examined the degree to which high inflows of foreign-born students affect the educational opportunities of native students. Borjas finds some evidence that an inflow of foreign-born students displaces native, white male students in elite institutions"

The other main article https://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/cacounts/CC_207GPCC.pdf is more positive but there is no way you can call it a rosey picture.

Clearly, the biggest effect of immigration is on previous immigrants (currently 30% of California): "Foreign-born workers already here sustain the largest losses in real wages, losing between 17 and 20 percent of their real wage over 14 years."

It just so happens that natives (specifically who are college educated) tend to have complimentary skill sets in the years mentioned.

"Except for workers with some college education, whose real wage gain is around 6 to 7 percent, no other group experiences real wage gains or losses larger than 4 percent. This implies that even with the moderate costs of moving, in the range of 5 to 10 percent of their yearly income, native workers would not move (out of or into California) in response to immigration."

That is the support you have that "native-born workers benefit from immigration". It helped college educated natives and the rest of the population wasn't negatively affected enough to leave California. And that's based on migration data ending in 2004 and Californians have been leaving in record droves since then.

Of course, it doesn't mention any thing about the rest of the effect on natives such as cost of living increases due to crowding, strain on institutions (do you want to send your kids to an average California school?), unwanted changes in culture and politics, decrease in social cohesion, decreases (or lack of improvement) in working conditions, increases in inequality or any of the other consequences.

The average US male wage has barely moved since the 1970s during a time of unprecedented levels of immigration. If immigration is such a net benefit to native-born worker, where did those improvements go?

One issue is that the scattershot visa applications from body shops crowd out applications from employers who want one specific, highly skilled person.

Do you think the possibility of finding a new job makes H1B workers feel any more capable of standing up for their beliefs at work and maybe saying "No" when asked to build something evil?

Correlation is not causation, but maybe you should read them.