> Most people coming on H1B are no less talented /skilled or hardworking that an average american techie.
I would like to disagree on this point, however I have never conducted any long-term research nor seen any conducted. My anecdotal experiences though definitely seem to indicate otherwise.
I think it's first important to clarify that by me making the statement that an H1B is less qualified than the average American tech worker, I am not saying that due to their race. I think that the process is broken and exploitative, and it encourages and incentivizes companies to specifically bring in people who are under-qualified. Let's take two possible scenarios:
A: Shyam excelled at the top of his class while attending school in India and managed to be accepted to receive a government scholarship to attend school overseas. With much glee he heads off to the US on his student visa to get his degree from a university there and get earlier exposure to new ideas and techniques. While there, he does an internship during the summers his sophomore and junior year with a local tech company. As graduation nears, he applies for and receives a green card, choosing to permanently reside in the US. Afterwards he begins his job search, starting with a position he is hired at with the company he interned with his junior year.
B: Deepak did not do so well in school, but knows that he wants to work in the technology field because it's a good way to make money and gain social status so he can date and marry the girls he is interested in. Unfortunately, he didn't meet the requirements for an overseas scholarship, so he attends an Indian university instead. Afterwards, he goes to work for a large Indian technology firm (Infosys, Wipro, et al). During his entire professional experience to this point he and his colleagues have been slogging away doing things mostly incorrectly, but with many hours so that their clients appear to be getting a good deal. After doing this for a number of years, he realizes he's got to get out of India and this situation, so he reaches out internally and gets accepted for a staffed role through his firm. Happily heading overseas to the US he arrives in California with his shiny new H1B working at a big American tech company on behalf of the staffing firm, only to realize that he's been thrust into a position intended for somebody with 5 years of useful experience, not the 3 years of useless experience he's had. He's way under-qualified, and struggles to keep up. He tries but is just not experienced or educated enough to handle the situation well, so finds himself in the exact same slog of burning more hours to do things less efficiently to meet deadlines.
I'm kind of hamming it up here, obviously, but my point is that for the most part there is absolutely no quality control from the perspective of the people who busted their ass, proved themselves, and have succeeded in their careers who are now working alongside people who are under qualified brought in under the guise of a staffing agency hiring H1Bs.
Nobody has a problem working with Shyam from situation A, but they would have a problem working with Deepak from situation B. It's not an issue of xenophobia or race as you seem to make it out to be, and it's not that we don't care or empathize. But we're at work to get our jobs done and we all have goals. If you're an engineer at the top of your game working on some exciting new technology, the last thing you need is to have your project derailed by inefficiencies, bugs, or outright bad actions from someone who is not experienced or qualified enough to be involved, but through the foibles of management found themselves there anyway.