[Buckeye McFrog]

Is it really fair to other countries to take away professionals who often received a free education in their homelands? While US citizens are badgered into college plans that put them in impossible debt?

There is a well-known story here in town of a local engineering company where a fistfight broke out in the office when staff engineers who went into their eyeballs in debt on a Bachelors Degree were given a new H1B colleague who had gotten his Masters essentially for free in his home country.

[Alberta's Child]

... when staff engineers who went into their eyeballs in debt on a Bachelors Degree were given a new H1B colleague who had gotten his Masters essentially for free in his home country.

This is an interesting quandary because it explains one big reason why the H1B immigrant is cheaper. A company that hires a U.S.-educated professional has to pay him enough to cover the cost of a ridiculously expensive college education, which puts the American professional at a disadvantage in any "universal" career like a STEM field where the expertise doesn't change from one country to the next.