Clearly companies place a dollar amount on how much they value having people work in country, otherwise they wouldn’t bring people over.

I think this move makes it likely companies will hire more expensive domestic workers.

That's a misguided assumption that doesn’t hold up in practice because it assumes H-1B workers were "brought over" based on employer need for a domestic worker. The need isn't for a domestic worker, its for a skilled worker and the skilled workers want to work in the US because it yields higher compensation and opportunity.

Many H-1B workers request sponsorship from employers despite having the ability to work from local offices because they have in-demand skills that give the leverage to ask for it knowing that it will result in better opportunities.

Tech companies are extremely motivated to have people working in person in their Bay Area offices. That's why you see the extraordinary numbers that you do on levels.fyi along with the insistence on RTO. But no matter how high they get, these numbers will never meet highly capable Americans' lifestyle demands, because the Bay Area doesn't have and will never build the housing or commuting infrastructure to support them in that quantity. Wage gains go straight into real estate.

The question is, if tech companies can't have their Bay Area offices filled with the caliber of people they want (who will accept being forever-renters or super-commuters), will they relent on US remote / small sites, or will they instead try to shift their trillion-dollar Bay Area office cultures to their Bangalore sites? My money's on the latter.