Actually the original idea behind H1B visas wasn’t to fill jobs. It was originally implemented to have exchanges between developing nations for technicians, nurses, and whatnot to come to the USA to gain experience in a first world country to take back to their third world country.”
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I suspect that’s how the H-1B was originally sold. But it didn’t take long to morph into ‘jobs American won’t/can’t do.’
You’re right! It didn’t take long for business executives to turn the H1B visa into a cheap labor pool deal.
We turned the tables on them, a bit - there is a training component to H1B that we took advantage of to provide advanced technical training to our citizen workforce at a local university.