because h1b visas require you to stay employed (you have like 30 days before they deport you) and they require you to keep the same job title throughout the whole greencard process or your waiting period starts over.
a) You have applied for your 485. b) Its been 180 days since you have applied for it.
This process is called invoking AC21.
In my opinion and experience H1B candidates are paid on par with other candidates. I saw no salary discrimination at least with decent and reputed companies. I agree H1b is exploited by some companies but those are typically consulting or outsourcing companies.
as for payment versus greencard/citizens versus h1b's, it depends on the company. I know some companies that do pay the same for both, but I can name at least 5 'reputable' (or at least, large, household name) companies that my coworkers told me had different, lower pay scales for the h1b workers that they actively avoided working for, even after getting a greencard. But since i've not worked for one directly (as far as i know anyway), i'm not going to name names.
The dev <-> QA switch probably isn't very common, but dev/qa -> management is apparently an issue, since green-cards for Indians with a masters take roughly a decade of waiting on an h1b to get (again, this is according to my coworkers, not something i have direct experience with).
[1]: http://immigrationroad.com/green-card/ac21-portability-chang...
From the page you linked:
"Hundreds of thousands of people were able to file I-485 applications under the July Visa Bulletin of 2007"
For a GC application to apply for 485 your PD needs to be current. India EB2 and EB3 is heavily backlogged. China EB2 situation is better than India EB2. If a GC application's or its spouse's country of birth is not India or China (ROW category, Rest Of World) , the PD moves really fast in EB2. I think its current now.
You need 5 years in the US to be granted a green card. h1b are valid 3 years. Generally you need 2 h1b to get a green card (of course you start the process much before the h1b ends) if you are in a gc and you stop working in the us for a certain amount of time (i forgot, but its not longer than a year), then you start over and the gc is terminated (you need a h1b again)
For citizen, its 10 years.
h1b specifies AFAIR that once you're unemployed you have to leave the country immediately without citing numbers albeit 30 days sounds reasonable.
a) if you have applied for 485 and it has been 6 months since you applied you invoke AC21 and you are done.
b) if you have not applied for 485, your new company will have to reapply for 1-140 and labor for the new position but you do not lose your place in the queue as your PD is ported from your previous application.
http://immigrationroad.com/green-card/ac21-portability-chang...