I went through the entire comment thread and feel like you guys are missing a lot of the H1B benefits by focusing just on tech and the effect of the Indian consultancies. Most PhDs, specially in STEM, math, stats, econ, etc. are not American. And almost all of them end up with a H1B visa at some point if they remain in the US. It might be lottery based if you go to work at any firm, or quota-free if it is in academia…
I also do not understand why Indian consultancies need to be demonized so much. Their practices might be a bit shady but then as the complexity of law grows the value of pushing the limits of law also goes up. 1. Indian consultancies have provided valuable labor in large quantity to US firms. 2. This has helped US firms remain competitive in the world. From ATT or Bank of America to Toyota and Sears everyone has supe…
The consulting company used to send really low quality candidate. The kind who might not clear high school maths and have some worthless degree from a remote college in India. Then I asked them to get their best people. Their best people were pretty bad. I mean the kind who would get rejected on telephonic screen within 10 minutes. Eventually the model that worked is that I would find great candidates and then this company would bring them on contract (some people prefer working on contract vs full time).
The amount of money waste on such consultancy projects was unbelievable. Companies prefer this because of some tax savings of CapEx vs OpEx. There would be a huge team of people doing near clerical work. I am confident that there are other citizens available who can do that job, at probably an higher cost.