As a H1-B myself, I think I'm pretty much a modern-day slave without the physical shackles. I hate going back to my home country and I love the intellectual, rational environment here. But I'm stuck with my current company until I get a green card which isn't bound to happen in the foreseeable future. I read his book on this and I agree with one of Matloff's points that H1-B should be solely for talent and I also agree with the reforms he suggests that there should be laws against exploiting them (ex: don't imprison them with the whole green card ruse which could take 6-8 yrs for some countries).
However, I disagree with his generalization that H1-Bs are talentless compared to Americans (Just look at Goog). And that somehow they're paid lower wages. All big companies (MSFT, FB, GOOG) pay H1-B candidates the same salaries as their American counterparts. And they all go through the same interview process. Personally, I went to a top 20 uni here and paid $100k in tuition alone. It is true that bringing more talented H1-Bs will drive down wages, but isn't that a competitive advantage ?(None of the European companies have this advantage really and I think it's one of the main reasons for the valley's growth.)
What we need to rectify is fraud of H1-Bs. Come up with a white list of companies that can use H1-Bs and make sure there's no cheap, talent less labor. Don't let body-shopping, consulting and outsourcing companies like Infosys, Wipro be issued H1-Bs. Most people in the operations group running our service for instance are on H1-B and frankly, the work they do can be done by any average American working at a BK/McDonalds. The pie that outsourcing companies are eating into is really a gold mine that should be used to expand the American middle class. But the outsourcing companies themselves seem to have powerful lobbying in place (NASSCOM). So it is a hard problem.
However, I disagree with his generalization that H1-Bs are talentless compared to Americans (Just look at Goog). And that somehow they're paid lower wages. All big companies (MSFT, FB, GOOG) pay H1-B candidates the same salaries as their American counterparts. And they all go through the same interview process. Personally, I went to a top 20 uni here and paid $100k in tuition alone. It is true that bringing more talented H1-Bs will drive down wages, but isn't that a competitive advantage ?(None of the European companies have this advantage really and I think it's one of the main reasons for the valley's growth.)
What we need to rectify is fraud of H1-Bs. Come up with a white list of companies that can use H1-Bs and make sure there's no cheap, talent less labor. Don't let body-shopping, consulting and outsourcing companies like Infosys, Wipro be issued H1-Bs. Most people in the operations group running our service for instance are on H1-B and frankly, the work they do can be done by any average American working at a BK/McDonalds. The pie that outsourcing companies are eating into is really a gold mine that should be used to expand the American middle class. But the outsourcing companies themselves seem to have powerful lobbying in place (NASSCOM). So it is a hard problem.