i don't buy the brain drain issue, sure there are probably some geniuses in the millions of H1B people, but majority are not that much better than the average American worker. So out of those few geniuses, what tiny percentage leaves?
They aren't leaving for the sake of leaving, they are leaving to exploit the opportunities in their home countries
The emigration of even a "tiny percentage" of geniuses is a great loss -- they're geniuses!
And if the "majority" are "not that much better than the average American worker" -- but still just a little better -- why can't they stay? Everyone above average brings up the average -- why not have them producing great stuff here rather than elsewhere?
because if they are at the same level, then the same level job goes to the Indian, because he can get paid half as much. When there is economic prosperity, noone really cares about immigrants because there are jobs aplenty for everyone, but when there is a down turn, people start wondering...why should we import 100,000 people who are not better than the thousands of our own unemployed people.
The geniuses are welcome, it's the lesser skilled people, who are imported solely to drive down wages and take jobs away from Americans that people have problems with.
Who said they are more skilled? You ever read code written by someone on an H1B?
Because they aren't producing great stuff, most programming jobs aren't at Google, they are at places where you maintain some crappy code written 10 years ago. This mundane crap can be worked on by the thousands of American programmers that are unemployed, because they aren't willing to work for $40K/yr like their H1B counterparts
They aren't leaving for the sake of leaving, they are leaving to exploit the opportunities in their home countries