>>Come back on a L1 visa and boom you can apply in the EB-1 category and get your green card in a couple of years.
Those days are gone now. You go into EB-1 only if you get into the US on L1-A. They don't give L1-A's easily these days. For starters you need to be in director level positions to even qualify for L1-A's. Even then the waiting period for India EB-1 itself is growing and stands at 5+ years now. And it will only increase.
>>I've quite a few friends who easily got their green cards working for TCS, Infosys, etc.
Put the saddle on the right horse. People who come in from those companies often work for The real deal is Cgnzt which even until recently filed L1-A's and EB-1's for thousands/lacs of people by cooking up documents. Often promoting some one with a BCom degree to a director, granting them a GC and then rolling back the promotion. Thousands to lacs have made it to GC and Passports this way. When I worked for a short time in the US, it was painful to see PhD students in Stanford struggle for little extra stay, while some one with a basic 2 year diploma land GCs in like an year. In fact even until recently the biggest incentive to work at Cgnzt was this.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...
8.4 lac Indians got citizenship only last year. 5.8 lac got green cards. This is basically abuse max.
Add this to manager's pets who routinely get their documents cooked to be Nobel Prize worthy talent and land GC's. Literally the wrongest possible people occupy the numbers these days. Add to this a large number of body shopping firms.
There are several top level doctors, lawyers and scientists who don't even get B1's.
In short we Indians bought this upon ourselves. Like everything else. We abuse things so much, so far and so blatantly it makes things impossible for the real people when they arrive at the scene.
I'm one of those people who got burned badly due to all these politics at every level. I have largely given up, you just need to get very lucky early life to win at these things. Or cheat shamelessly.