The way the US treats Indian (and other large countries, but India has it worst) H1B holders is disgusting. You can work in the US for over a decade and start a family, and still be on a visa which requires you to leave the country if you spend just a bit of time unemployed. And it makes it very hard to switch jobs.

I wish this weren't tied to getting just a PhD though. We are already over-incentivizing getting advanced degrees in the US for immigration purposes. While this technically exempts foreign degree holders from the GC quota, those people still need to get work authorization to begin with, so it does increase the incentive to do a PhD in the US for regular work immigration purposes since that also gives you work authorization via OPT.

I don't see any reason to keep per-country GC quotas in place. It punishes individuals for almost no reason - it doesn't actually prevent immigration (since we still grant work visas with temporary residence - that's a separate process from getting a GC), it just keeps immigrants in precarious positions for much longer than others purely on the basis of nationality. I can't think of a legit reason to do this that doesn't either boil down to racism/xenophobia or some kind of innumerate argument that it's unfair for countries with more immigrants to be given more GCs.