From your own citation: "Counterfactual simulations based on our model suggest that immigration increased the overall welfare of US natives, and raised workers’ incomes by 0.2% to 0.3%."
So they found that H-1B, etc increased native worker incomes overall.
So they mentioned some distributional issues ...
"wages for [high-skilled] US computer scientists would have been 2.6% to 5.1% higher in 2001"
Oh that kind of blows a little bit. But let's put this in perspective. 2.6%-5.1% higher in 2001 would be the difference between 100k and 103-105k. Sure I would love to have had that dough... but this 1) fails to demonstrate a substantial savings to firms 2) completely burns your argument workers making $0k.. they're doing quite fucking well. (100k was close to the average for mid-level software engineers in my neighborhood in 2001). This is not standard of living altering stuff.
And overall the economy did better with immigration.
> Most tech workers wouldn't take a $40k job because they realize that's a gross undervaluing of their skillsets.
What do you define as "undervaluing?" What sets this number? What makes $80k a fair wage vs $40k? Well the ultimate is the market. It is absolutely true that the mere act of bringing in more labor via H-1B will lower wages. I will not dispute that, that's basic microecon.
But how do you determine what your "labor is worth?" Because your labor is worth whatever that market price is, there is no "hope" to it. If a population is refusing to work for offers of $40k, because that "undervalues" their skills then that implies that the market has jobs that are correctly greater valued. If this were not the case then these people should just stop and take the $40k job, why continue applying for something that doesn't exist?
Of course not everything is smooth. The lag in filling these positions is what contributes to frictional unemployment. This is a good chunk of what makes up the unemployment figures. The fact remains, and what you just ignored... the unemployment rate in all industries, but especially IT and most engineering disciplines is the lowest it has been in years.
The Disney issue ultimately displaced not much more than 100 workers which is less than 0.2% of their tech and IT workforce, if that is the worst of the "bad news", it doesn't diminish my point.
Again, there is no disputing that a foreign worker program will lower certain wages in the short-term, possibly longer. There is plenty of evidence that this has not affected employment on higher skilled jobs.
The other weird thing that is always mentioned by H-1B foes is how shitty these Indian workers with no experience are (it was mentioned multiple times in the article you linked). So how does that square? If these workers are truly that crap, then why would anyone be surprised that Disney or anyone would want to get rid of expensive workers that can be replaced by these crap workers. Why should Disney or anyone pay top dollar for someone that can be replaced with the human equivalent of a shell script. If these crap workers really don't work out (and yes this has happened), well then the market isn't really harmed then is it?
What about automation and consolidation of services. Both have had tremendous effects on the IT industry. There were well paying jobs for "Computer Operators" a few short years ago.. now there are literally a handful and they pay barely above minimum wage. The influx of H-1B holders had little to do with this.
Finally, I'm not going to argue this, this is just a question: What do you feel gives you more entitlement to a job that an immigrant will willingly bring themselves over here and do for less?