Wage suppression
I'm not saying that the teachers or nurses are not underpaid - they should be paid more, but the ability for the organization to pay them more is often constrained by other factors (teacher salaries for public schools, medicare reimbursement rates for hospitals).
Saying "no, we shouldn't hire them" doesn't mean that a qualified American teacher will show up or new nurses will go to Fargo to get a job. Rather, foreign language programs in schools will be discontinued and hospitals in rural areas will close (being unable to meet the required nurse to patient ratios).
There are problems with the system. People on HN often forget that there are a lot of other professions outside of technology that make use of the H-1B when there is a genuine need.
Unfortunately technology - and especially technology consultancies - have flooded the application process for the H-1B visas to the point where H-1B has become synonymous with Indian programmer working at a WITCH company.
> Public Law 114–113, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, imposed a fee of $4,000 on H-1B petitions [edit: for H-1B dependent employers] and $4,500 on L-1A and L-1B petitions. The additional H-1B fees would apply to all petitions postmarked on or after December 18, 2015, and until September 30, 2025.
This apparently has expired. The proclamation "Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers" is of dubious footing.
You know what would have been good with the budget bill (the previous Consolidated Appropriations Act was a budget bill signed by Obama)? Quadrupling the application fee for H-1B dependent employers and hiring auditors to make sure that the applicants are properly qualified, that there is a position open (not just a position on the bench at a consultancy) for the applicant to fill, that the position to be filled was attempted to be filled by a and that the employer is making full use of their existing employees (e.g. no one on the bench).
This is something that is (was) there and can be regulated and audited and catch the problematic employers - not French teachers and nurses.
IMO, they are a clearer reflection of the fact that the industry has lots of jobs that are tied to remote future payoff and dependent on financing outside of operations, and that tighter money policies reduced the flow of investment into the broad industry (outside of the AI segment), cutting a lot of those jobs.
There is a problem with tech and how oversubscribed the H-1B visa is because of tech contracting - especially with visa dependent employers. However, the suggestion to cancel the program would impact many other professions (that already suffer because of tech in the field) where the visa isn't used in the same way.
The problems that we are seeing is not one of the H-1B visa, but rather large amounts of money sloshing around in the tech industry trying to get things done first and consultancies trying to get a piece of the pie from people who have ideas but no idea of how to do do whatever the hyped thing is today.
The only people who need immigrants are greedy businesses. It makes life worse for literally everyone else in a nation.