> The way the law was written, it's pretty clear the intent was that we'd only import labor we could not get at home, and thus it would have no impact on worker wages.
Yes that's why I wrote that the current process is a tradeoff which requires additional measures to prevent abuse from the Infosys type companies.
But you can't expect the richest, highest paying country in the world to be able to fix its talent shortage and companies not try to take advantage of the pay discrepancy.
> If it's having any impact on the wages of citizens, that's clearly not in the best interest of the average US citizen.
Unfortunately this is false. There are industries where the cost of training enough American citizens to be experts enough to earnsignificant sums makes the business infeasible. I worked in an AI lab at a top University in the US. It's 90% foreign graduate students in those programs. The current AI boom couldn't happen here without this visa program, honestly.
US citizens don't benefit from a stagnant economy like many European nations. They benefit from an economy with lots of businesses popping up and a robust economy. And unfortunately, since Americans are not well educated and are shrinking in number, those kind of businesses need to be staffed by the highly educated from abroad. And those people will accept less pay than US citizens would just due to upbringing abroad. No one in the world expects the pay Americans expect.