> It's also ironic that there is always generic xenophobia against "second-tier programming talent from India" when Indians as a group pay the highest taxes per-capita in the US and are one of the most law-abiding.
I'm curious if you've ever actually worked at a US company that was almost entirely Indian. I think a lot of this has to do with people's personal experiences at work.
I worked in a subgroup of Fortune 10 company that was 98% Indian (3 white people out of about 200). The amount of cronyism was really eye opening. Personal friends of the bosses were the only people hired by the parent company (others were "consultants" for an all-H1B sponsoring firms). There were fairly reliable rumors of company leaders having their own "staffing" companies that took cuts from many of the H1Bs as well. We had a number of wives (and in one case a husband) of developers who couldn't program, but would get programming jobs as personal favors - a few on each team. Our head boss was chosen because she and an executive lived in the same apartment complex and their kids played together. This is the kind of stuff that went on. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else I've worked. There was almost no accountability for people being bad at their job. Almost all had Masters degrees and a few years experience, but were no better (and usually worse) than recent college grads from the local state university.
I'm pretty sure this isn't isolated because you hear about entire departments becoming all Indian at some companies (Cisco, UHG, ect). Basically, everyone who can't stand the cronyism leaves and the Indians bosses only hire their friends or friends of friends or other Indians.
I'm sure many people have good experiences working with Indian H1Bs (and I've had good experiences when they are part of a much larger and diverse team like what you'd have at a FAANG company), but one bad experience like I had can really sour you towards what's going on.