There is nothing "weak" about standing up for your own economic interests. The H1B program has largely been based on a fiction--using a handful of superstars as marketing cover for tens of thousands of mid-skill developers. But with AI now coming for everyone's job the pretext of a "skills shortage" is unsustainable.

I don't think that's what's happening here. It's pretty clear importing thousands (10s of thousands?) people into an area has an effect on the local residents that's not good.

These aren't immigrants.

Wages aren't the primary determination of slave labor, it's control. I suppose "indentured servant" would be even better, but there are an enormous number of restrictions on H1B holders in how they move (both between employers and countries).

(I don't love this analogy and consider it extreme and not overly accurate)

They've been offshoring as much as they can for decades. The H1-B program hasn't stopped it and if it were eliminated there wouldn't be a huge surge in offshoring. Many companies have already hit the limit on offshoring and had to pull things back onshore.

Then let them. If they want to offshore, let them have the associated pros and cons, and free up real estate that American workers can use to start competitors.

Offshored workers don't compete with me for food, housing, education, etc.

You're competing with 2 billion Asians. We're never going back to the 1950s no matter now much people cry about it.

They just have to go to any large corporate campus and take a good look. I know of a particular one in TX where 90% of the IT employees are of one particular nationality and at least 90 % of that group do not have any kind of permanent status in the USA. I am not talking about 100-200 employees, I'm talking about 1000 plus.

The kind that has a strong in-group bias and likes to hire from his own ethnicity, gradually taking over departments.

Thats not what the issue is, it's that they aren't free to job-hop in the way that other people are. H1B keeps their wages artificially depressed and they have a sword of damocles over their heads threatening deportation.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34793/w347...

Random refugees coming into the country "takin my jerb" isn't happening. Large companies importing skilled labor for specific positions to either drive down sector wages or acquire workers who are more willing to put up with bad working conditions (this is nursing right now) is a different beast.

That ended up not happening.

I liked the idea (even as a former h1b holder) but it seems tied up in court and nobody is paying it yet

Clearly not