alt Hacker NewsThis is the wrong logic. Immigrants can make exactly the same as natives and still suppress wages.
Fundamentally how prices are set is someone sets a price, and if there are no takers they change the price. If a company offers a salary, and they bring in an H1-B to fill the role, they don't have to raise the salary. Over time it suppresses the wage.
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If that was the case, why would they have to hide the job offer? If no American citizen is going to take the job at the lower pay, there is no need to hide the offer from them. If they are going to take the lower pay, there is no advantage to hire an H1-B.
This assumes that the number of jobs in the US is magically fixed.
The thing is that all these mega-corporations have offices across the world, but currently want to hire in the US. You and I want our personal jobs to be expensive, but we don't want the prospect of hiring us where we live to be too expensive. And even aside from cost, you also don't want them to say "there's not enough employees there, it's not worth hiring."[0]
[0] I'm technically no longer living in the US, but I was until recently.
Something else worth mentioning is that the companies are conferring a valuable benefit that they generally don't have to pay for: The promise of US citizenship for the employee and (eventually) their family.