From "How & Why Government, Universities, & Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists & High-Tech Workers" by Eric Weinstein (2017)
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...> the real origins of the Immigration Act of 1990s and the H1-B visa classification [...] American industry and Big Science convinced official Washington to put in place a series of policies that had little to do with any demographic concerns. Their aims instead were to keep American scientific employers from having to pay the full US market price of high skilled labor. They hoped to keep the US research system staffed with employees classified as “trainees,” “students,” and “post-docs” for the benefit of employers. The result would be to render the US scientific workforce more docile and pliable to authority and senior researchers by attempting to ensure this labor market sector is always flooded largely by employer-friendly visa holders who lack full rights to respond to wage signals in the US labor market.
> The correlate of these objectives were shifts in orientation toward building bridges to Asia and especially China, so that senior scientists, technologists, and educators could capitalize on technological, employment, and business opportunities from Asian (and particularly Chinese) expansion. This, in turn, would give US scientific employers and researchers access to the products of Asian educational systems which stress drill, rote learning, obedience, and test driven competition while giving them relief from US models which comparatively stress greater creativity, questioning,independence, and irreverence for authority.