alt Hacker News> They flood the H1B lottery, crowding out (imo) more deserving high-skill folks.
I really wish this was quantifiable in some way -- I have no way to tell if this statement is accurate.
I've worked with some very skilled H1B that definitely deserved to be here. If companies like Infosys or Cognizant are taking "slots" that could be filled by people like those H1Bs, then I'd consider that a big problem. Companies like these are not doing "highly skilled" work.
Edit: I kinda wonder if the "highly skilled" value judgement is a holdover from the era where people thought you were a genius if you touched a computer.
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Remember that H1B is a lottery. If you are skilled you will be around the skilled people who won the lottery. But most of the jobs aren’t going to those people. The lottery treats a job at Google and a job at WiPro as being the same in terms of odds.
The people that deserve the jobs are Americans. It doesnt matter if a foreigner is more skilled--the American people don't want to complete for jobs in a global labor market.
> "If companies like Infosys or Cognizant are taking "slots" that could be filled by people like those H1Bs, then I'd consider that a big problem."
It's hard to get data, but this is precisely what appears to me to be happening.
There's a limited number of slots by country. These companies specifically target those slots. I've worked with these folks (who are wonderful people, to be clear), and also had multiple friends with very niche, in-demand skills need to leave the country.
I don't have the data, but at a micro level, the system does appear to simply be set up backwards.