> 2. I'm kinda surprised those firms were even trying to get green cards for their employees. I thought their whole model was to rotate offshore people into the US for temporary assignments on H1-Bs.

Certainly not at Microsoft.

> 3. That was always kinda bullshit and was unfair to everyone. You've got some guy who's settled, been working for years, made friends, etc. then you check that there's no US qualified worker? That check should have always been the first step of an H1-B. Delaying it actually made me pretty sympathetic to the attempts to game the system to prevent and American from getting the job.

There's a similar evaluation done for H1B.