I think there are a few bits of context that should be considered.

India has 1/8th of the planets population. China is another 1/8th.

Obviously, Americans don't need H1B visas, and you are going to see more visa's coming from developing countries.

India's common language is English, they can easily communicate and get hired by American companies because of this.

Considering this, should it be a surprise they are such a significant part of the H1B program?

It isn't that 70% of the smartest people, though, they also have a great education system, it's 70% of the people that companies can assimilate into their environments are coming from India.

Perhaps the system could be overhauled to have an India specific visa and not group everyone in together?

Also, as a Canadian, another large immigrant population in the US, most of us don't come into the states under H1Bs because TN (and possibly other Visa's) are quite a bit easier.

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rayiner 12 hours ago | parent [-]

India has about 70 million college graduates, and gets about 70% of H1bs. The Philippines has 18 million a quarter as many as India), but accounts for only 1-2% of H1bs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_... https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b.... The Philippines is a former U.S. colony!

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pedalpete 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Should all tertiary education be considered the same? Maybe I'm wrong about how this is considered, and I'm not American, or in America, so it doesn't really make a difference to me, but if we're mostly talking about tech jobs, do you hear of people talking about great Philippian universities like?

My impression is that India has some universities with high reputations.

	▲	rayiner 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Tertiary education isn’t all the same, but that cuts against India as much as for it. India has some good universities, but also many bad ones. Half of Indian college graduates are unemployable: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/degree-vs... The Philippines has universities ranked higher than some IIT: https://www.topuniversities.com/asia-university-rankings. Indonesia and Malaysia have ones ranked higher than any IIT. Of course Korea and China dominate the rankings for Asia. Latin America has many universities ranked in the range of the IITs as well. But to put all that in perspective, Arizona State is ranked 173 in the QS rankings, above all but 2 Indian universities. The U.S. has an extremely deep talent pool.