The more than 400,000 tech workers who have been laid off since 2022 are a clear reflection of wage suppression in the industry, as many of them have spent extended periods without a paycheck.
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.