As a foreigner with an American degree, I find this news unsurprising. In fact, I had wondered why some companies were seemingly reluctant to fill in the H1B paperwork, considering these workers are probably more loyal than their citizen / permanent resident counterparts.
As for me, the lack of proper immigration avenues in practice was one of the reasons leading me out of the country, this despite the higher salaries, having adopted the “American way of life” during my stay, and my many friends in the country. I found it bizarre, for lack of a better word, that a country would welcome people for 4 or more years of highly specialised education and training (F1, J1) and yet so few alternatives would be offered later for working (basically, the H1B programme, and the O programme, the latter not being a path to permanent residence).
I believe the current system mostly benefits the employer by making it difficult to switch jobs, and that this causes a real depression in salaries or working conditions.
As an aside, and an example of this depression, during my stay I was only allowed to work campus jobs(1). Even though my work was voluntary (i.e., I did not _need_ to work to remain in the country), I wanted to because I thought it would help me gain experience and I found a technically relevant position. But, because I had to work on campus, I was making significantly less than I would have made outside.
Edited: formatting
(1) There are some exceptions to this for things like internships, unforeseen financial hardship, etc.