We legitimately do need some of these people.
The solution is not to eliminate the H-1B, but to recognize that when a company absolutely needs a premium employee, they must pay a premium price for that crucial talent. The system Japan uses is such an imported crucial employee gets 25% more than their Japanese coworkers.
Everyone recognizes that this employee is not displacing a Japanese employee, and is providing the company with skill they can aspire to learn.
By contrast American employees recognize that the H-1B "prevailing wage" is set by cheap foreign labor, and further resent being required to train their substandard replacements.
While the O-1 program is a viable option for the rare world class contributors (I work with one), the H-1B program can be fixed by fair wages for the still needed and more abundant well above-average talent.
I’d like to agree with you, but I can’t.
Any modified H1-B program will have an army of lawyers examining the updated legislation to find new loopholes to exploit.
Simply shut the program down.
There is one poster over at DISQUS.com that claims 30 percent of recent Berkeley Engineering graduates can’t find work. If that number is correct, there’s no need for a guest worker program.
“We legitimately do need some of these people. “
No, we don’t. There isn’t a single Indian I have ever met that has ever been needed. Not a single one.