We couldn't have kept up with the demand when we needed to hire and there weren't enough US citizens available. They helped us USA citizens grow our company.
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H1B is OK, the threshold is too low. Bring the pay treshold to $250K, base W2 pay. That will help with quality of folks brought in, you'll truly get the brightest... It will help with diversity too as it'll be lucrative for all nations, not only the developing ones. 250K will bring in Japanese, German, Korean, Australian, etc. engineers - top notch folks.
H1B easy to fix - make the minimum required salary super high to justify the skill. Problem solved.
The hate on h1bs is misplaced. H1b haters, start hating your government policies that are lobbied by Wall Street. Don't take your anger out on people who are being used by wall st (h1b) as they are here only as a result of such immigration policies. They did not come here but are brought here with a carrot of 'American Dream' and are forced with the stick called h1b visa status.
There is no shortage of qualified American engineers. They just aren't going to work an engineering job for $80,000 per year and crappy benefits in Silicon Valley--which is less than we made for those jobs in 1996.
OP, no hate for H1B but it should be for US higher educated students and scientists and not for companies to shipload cheap labor from overseas. This takes away american jobs and also dont do any just for those foreign engineers with no security in the US. This only benefits Wall Street.
I am an H1B myself and I can tell you that the system is abused. There are a lot of qualified engineers who are US citizens and can't find jobs. There is no shortage of qualified American engineers as they make it sounds like.
Back in the days the Baby Boomers worked hard to get engineering degrees to better their lives. They spoiled their kids and gave them an extreme sense of entitlement and they didn't go into engineering so we had no pool to hire from. Why not put all this energy into teaching them a work ethic.