Rampant abuse, fraud, nepotistic hiring combined with record high tech unemployment to start.

no OP, but I can answer one way:

the US has very many visa programs, including half a dozen to a dozen work visa programs

this one particular visa program is politically radioactive, as if it is the only work visa program, and it doesn't accomplish its stated goals in hardly any way

until that can be settled I think and the program ironed out, it should be hampered to closed off, a moratorium

I would like to see the H1B program used to its original (and still codified) standards - highly in demand professionals that couldn't be sourced in the US so easily and are exceptional. The minimum wage for what such a professional would be paid was set in the 1980s, to $60,000 for someone with a master's degree, when it was exception. This minimum would be around $156,000/yr today. Okay, let's do that, that makes sense

if its politically radioactive to even just suggest that, all the more reason for a moratorium on that program, to me

Because the excesses are well documented and the proponents of it are constantly disingenuous about the issues that make it widely hated everywhere except in SV and in C-suites. It's at risk of being eliminated completely because those who abuse the system are spoiled brats that melt down over any hint of reform. When reform isn't possible, elimination becomes the only choice to make the excesses stop. Pretending not to understand this only makes it that much more likely that it will be eliminated entirely. The time for getting away with playing dumb is long gone. All it accomplishes is making the program even more hated.

The temporary program from three decades ago to bring in some extra help until the industry could ramp up training programs to develop domestic talent isn't temporary after three decades and the industry has made clear as long as it exists, there will be no honest attempts at developing talent instead of going for the lowest cost global source. All of the above will of course fall on deaf ears, with all the usual intellectually dishonest deflections and outright lies being brandied about. This once again guarantees that reform will be impossible and elimination the only solution.

I am looking at the problem from a population and industry level, and so my apologies if I am not looking at it from the individual’s perspective.

The first issue which stands out to me is that the world at-large doesn’t create enough jobs in industries where highly-skilled Western educated workers can work. In fact, low-skilled Western educated workers don’t have many prospects at a global stage either. So Western-educated workers (either immigrants or citizens) are stuck in Western nations due to several factors, including pay ranges, work conditions, and quality of life reasons, like access to a clean and safe environment, or a working justice system.

The quality of life reasons and pay ranges are the main attractors for immigrants as well, which is why some nation-state economies have remittances as a key component of their GDP. On top of that, some nations have sacrificed building an education and employment infrastructure in favor of building what are essentially factories for producing workers for Western nations. This also has the side effect of keeping the quality of life of these countries suppressed because people who would voice the most discontent simply leave. So, I’d say the second reason immigration visas need a more nuanced approach is because they hurt the development of other countries, unless those countries set up remittances or job contract pipelines. But even so, there’s no guarantee that the baseline quality of life will improve even as GDP sky rockets.

If you look at where people work, and how they’re the happiest working, it’s when they can find something modest which affords them a reasonable quality of life in their local environment. Great examples of this include many East Asian and Northern European countries. The key difference here is that these countries prioritize building benefits for their populations via education and workforce training and development. Unlucky people in any country will hope to immigrate to change that aspect of their life, which is a failure on the part of their home nation, not the individual.

Some nations have prioritized infiltration of large cap Western companies primarily for strategic geopolitical reasons, and that’s the third reason why I think immigration visas need a more nuanced approach.

Lastly (because I am secretly an idealist), I’d like large cap companies to be responsible with the great power they wield. Large cap companies have a global reach, and so can upset the local economies of any country by interfering with the work of small to medium sized businesses. Imagine if Google decides that it will set up shop in South Africa because the U.S. curtails all H1B hiring. Some people in South Africa will benefit, but the overall effect will be that the majority of the population will desire to shift its behavior so the individual can work at the best possible economic opportunity. While that sounds like an ideal scenario to a Western-educated liberal, consider that many businesses in local communities will lose out on potential high-skilled workers. The ecosystem of workforce development and employment needs to balanced against community development. Large cap companies subvert the function of local communities by shifting the calculus to economic optimization, whereas healthy and thriving communities have other goals as well.

Populations as a whole have lost sense of purpose because the main reason most people work is so that they can stop working. But globalization perverted that mindset by prioritizing the needs of large corporations over the needs of local communities. People still want to stop working, but they don’t know how to reach that goal. This problem exists because more than half the countries in the world have sacrificed their own development in favor of developing workers for large cap companies in Western countries.

Bit of a hastily typed ramble, but I hope the gist of it is clear enough.