OK. Eliminate H-1Bs entirely.
You know what happens next? Your company will simply outsource development to India. It's easily done, and India resources can undercut American programmers by 50%.
My company sells Indian outsourcing, and we're doing very well right now.
It's all about productivity. Get out of programming and into project management.
Nope, it's all about short sighted greed and stupidity. In fact, you better hope you have your resume up to date, as PROJECT MANAGEMENT is going H1-B as well. Have fun..
Gee...where to start.
Okay, first if everyone got out of programming and went into project management, we would have lots of incompetent (and overpaid) project managers.
Second, it makes no sense to take a highly skilled programmer (of which sadly there are not enough of) and make them a project manager. Believe me, I have done both, and project management is really not that hard to do well when leading software developers (building an aircraft, or a nuclear power plant, yes; being a PM for a software project team, no.)
Finally - lots of software development can't be sent offshore. I've seen it done, and done well (rarely), but it generally only works well when doing either very simple piecework that is easy to spec, or when doing very large projects where a whole mass of work with very clear and well defined requirements enable the code to be designed and coded offshore. But - from my experience - quite often we need to be meeting with the end users face to face to determine those requirements.
Most software projects fail because:
(a) No one shakes the real requirements out, so the software is developed to what the developers think the users need, while the guys who sold the work take the money and run; or
(b) The end users want the new stuff to look and act just like the old stuff (no business process change needed no sirree) and the end result is a heavily customized piece of junk that can't integrate with future upgrade releases - meanwhile the guys that sold the work take the money and run and the executives that bought the work go to jobs at other companies while putting on their resumes how they led and managed this major initiative (leaving off how they bail before it goes bust.)
(c) Or lastly the guys that sold the work didn't bring in the senior architects who could have told them that the concept wouldn't fly (can't scale, too complex, not enough money) so they just staff some junior types (who are cheap) who produce a system (that is supposed to support 20,000 simultaneous users) and craps out when more than 200 people sign on simultaneously. Meanwhile the guys that sold the project have taken the money and ran (e.g., they put on their resumes how they have sold millions of dollars worth of work, so they got hired somewhere else to do the same.)
Hmm...see a pattern here?
In none of these cases will "moving it offshore" fix the problem. In fact they will aggravate it.
Oh well - guess I am giving away that I have been in this business for a while. :-)
Yes, until you begin to 'outsource' project managers - then what?
Wrong. It's all about greed. And I say let the scumbags who run these companies move offshore to India. At least then they won't be taking advantage of the world-class infrastructure we have here. Let them go to Bangladesh where they can hire people for 50 cents an hour - and let them deal with the thrid-world infrastructure they have there.
If companies are going to take advantage of the tax-payer furnished infrastructure we have in the US, then they have a RESPONSIBILITY to put American citizens (who are the taxpayers) first. And if they don't like that, let them move off to the garbage dumps of Mexico City.