Not really. H1B immigrants raise the bar on hiring. Often times they are willing to work more hours, study more, etc for a chance to thrive in the USA. This reduces working conditions, effective wages, and employment prospects for Americans.
Or, because they are forced to under threat of deportation. This is only the case because of the un-due power that the H1-B system gives the employer. This un-due power can easily be taken away (by not tying the status directly to the employer, and giving the employee the actual freedom to switch positions).
If the employer didn't have effective-deportation power over an employee, then maybe they wouldn't be able to get away with "reduce[d] working conditions, effective wages, and employment prospects for Americans".
The enemy here isn't the foreign worker. If you're upset with anyone in this situation it should be an employer that is taking advantage of everyone else involved, and managed to put the blame on someone else.
The SWE market (where most H1s are employed) is so competitive that shmucks who run through 3 month bootcamps get 100k+ offers.
The threat of being fired is not as effective as you think it is.
It's kind of a catch22 but that's one reason we have these boot camps / tutorials etc...
I don't think grandparent comment is talking about the situation now, it was a more general comment about H1Bs under normal circumstances being forced to work long hours by employers under threat of job loss.
Hmm. In history, I think this also applied to workers' advocacy of the 40 hour work week.
"Don't blame others you can't do your 70 hour work week. There's plenty of others we have to replace you if you won't."
Regulation was the developed world's answer to a race to the bottom.
The people who work 70hrs a week are people who are ambitious and want to get ahead in their careers - this isn't limited to immigrants in any way, plenty of Americans do this as well and you see this in other high paying fields - Law, Finance, Consulting, Medicine - for some reason programmers are the ones that complain despite being paid equally well.
You don't want to do that? Oh, I see.