There is a big difference between the startup co-founder and the foreign talent recruited by FAANG companies, and the crap IT consultancy companies pull all the time.
H-1B salaries are public [0], so it is easy to debunk this.
The minimum prevailing wage for the area and location is in place for this very reason.
> ... job-shopping in personal networks when someone loses an H1B job ...
If anything, this demonstrates that the current system is inhumane, and it should be more lenient towards H-1B holders.
Unfortunately wage fraud and theft are real things that happen. You don't have to believe me, you can find buckets of H1B holders who will verify this. I've seen it myself, I've been in IT for 30 years and seen personally, many times, everything I listed in my comment.
I myself was a visa holder not long ago. Outside of Internet forums, I haven’t been able to find anyone who would claim that visa wage fraud exist.
They can't get around this as there are tax records of who being paid by whom. This would force company to hire American, reduce fraud, and still being favorable to the big boys paying the lobbying fees. Win win for all who matters (not specifically the regular folks, if they do, it is accidental...)
The entire premise of the H1-B program is when there is a shortage of qualified/available domestic labor. Turning around and tying hiring in the program to having 9x as many domestic employees seems like it's so counter to that notion that not even the government would create such an inanely contradictory policy.