The problem essentially is that many of these workers either don't know that they can switch jobs, don't have the skills relevant to get another job or, in many cases, have a sort of loyalty to their present company for 'giving them an opportunity to come to the US'.
The last sentiment is a lot more common than you would imagine.
No it isn't. Even though the process is informally called an "H-1B transfer", changing employers while on H1B actually requires filing a brand new H-1B petition with USCIS. The only difference is that this petition is not subject to the annual cap. Everything else - the crazy requirements and loops you and the sponsoring employer have to jump through - is the same.
What this means is that there is a big risk associated with the process. Since it's a new petition, it can be rejected. You are literally at the mercy of the USCIS officer processing your application, and they can deny it for any reason.
Of course, this also assumes that you're able to find an employer who is willing to sponsor your visa. Considering the legal expenses (thousands of dollars per worker), the hassle and the risk, most companies don't. And if your skills are in a niche field, good luck finding any that do.
I wouldn't say it's "very easy", but it's not super hard either.
I don't disagree with what you're saying in general, but shouldn't there be some cost incurred by the new company?
Remember, like it or not, the h1b program is technically designed to only come into play when a company can't find suitable local talent to fill a position.
In our case it was a few thousand dollars of legal fees and gov "expedite" fees
If we were doing a lot of them our legal fees could go way down, and we'd get good at doing them.
The cap is a big deal, and the reason most h1bs get rejected.
Like you said, if an h1b worker is already here, the cap doesn't apply -- I think that's a good thing.
It seems to be a common misconception that h1bs are bound to their employer.
I simply don't think that's true.
(And not threaten or complain until the transfer is processed successfully?)
Have you tried changing jobs on a H-1B, with an employer who wants to stop you, and who gets legal advice on how to go about doing that? It SHOULD be an easy process to change jobs.
So, in practice, the mobility provisions are only non-onerous in a small percentage of the cases: If you don't want to stay in the US, or you want to, but no Green Card paperwork has been filed.
There's also companies that play games with your green card: A friend of mine changed departments (the company he is on goes through constant reorgs, and the company decided that the job description had been changed enough that they had to file a new labor certification. Guess what? If you have a 10 year wait, and every time your job description changes a bit, you decide your green card must restart, you'll never, ever get it.
And you can't ask for the green card by yourself: The employer does, so you are at the mercy of their lawyers too.
The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc.
It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform.
In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated:
As you know, our employment-based immigration system is
afflicted with extremely long waits for immigrant visas, or
"green cards," due to relatively low green card numerical limits
established by Congress 24 years ago in 1990.
...
To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several
steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process.
The latest visa bulletin [2] lists India EB2 priority date as 1st Nov 2004. Let me translate that for people not familiar with the jargon - an immigrant from India who is being granted Green Card now applied on 1st Nov 2004 and s/he already had 5 years industry experience then.
USCIS rarely wastes an opportunity to remind [3] everyone that it receives very little taxpayer money for immigration services and about 95% of it's budget comes from fees. But this self-financing is made possible by leeching off of thousands of legal immigrants for decades. If they could do their assigned jobs properly - providing EAD for immigrants with approved I-140, recapturing unused green card applications from prior years etc - it would have been a huge relief for many immigrants.
[1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120...
[2] Visa Bulletin July 2016 - https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul...
[3] USCIS on Twitter - https://twitter.com/USCIS/status/740574919717715968
In this instance it isn't the category of Visa, per say, but how immigrant visas are being used.
OP makes a good point about being shackled to a company. The bigs (MSFT, others), don't seem to do such, but the body shops certainly do take advantage of the situation.
Really, if you look at visas granted by company, those at the top are often body shops and should be both ineligible and required to pay significantly more.
Scammers will prey on those with less chance to make it.
Edit: btw, when things got bad at my sponsor company I was able to get another company to sponsor, transfered my H1B and continued the GC process.