> EPI, for example, notes that American employers do not have to recruit US residents before hiring foreign H-1B workers, that it's legal for US employers to underpay H-1B workers, relatively speaking, and that H-1B workers are often exploited and lack job protection and mobility, among other issues.
I think that, in the modern, immigrant-averse west, that's exactly how a worker visa system is supposed to work.
* We don't have enough skilled workers, and employers think the ones we have are too expensive
* Foreign countries have a glut of skilled workers, and are competing with our companies
* So let's allow in a quota of foreign skilled workers, and let's let companies take the piss and underpay them.
Profit! From the POV of the government (they can screw the quota down to placate nativists, and point to the fact that the visa workers are earning a lot less than the natives), and from the POV of the employers (they get a cheapo workforce).
A better solution is to improve the education standard of the natives; but that would involve public expenditure, which is anathema to conservatives, to the press, and apparently (in the UK) it's also anathema to the Labour Party.
I'm not an open borders wingnut; but I think expenditure on high-quality education is a vital investment in a country's future. We have some world-beating universities in the UK; but government policies have resulted in those institutions giving many of their places to overseas students, who pay a lot more. So we educate lots of foreigners, who then go back to where they came from, and then get hired on worker visas to come back and work here, e.g. as doctors and nurses, of which we have a dire shortage.
Then we tighten the rules on worker visas, like banning them from bringing their kids with them.