Curiously, 1999 was the year that the new H1B rules went into effect...
85,000 H1Bs per year.
Renewable for six years.
Employers can indefinitely sponsor H1Bs for Green Cards, which removes them from the H1B head count quota.
Indefinitely?
Yup. The number of Green Card to USA Citizenship conversions each year has a hard cap quota for each country.
Last time I checked, 1.6 million Asian Indians had Green Cards and are still waiting for Citizenship.
In other words - cheap foreign labor, sometimes for a decade or more.
Without that cheap foreign labor working in USA, the work would be moved abroad. Internet is world wide. My X-Rays are now read by foreign doctors. By keeping the jobs in US, economy benefits with infrastructure maintenance, and property taxes to local governments. Buildings require cleaning crew, repairs, and peripheral staff. All that would be gone if business is moved abroad.