H-1B ?
Demand for the 65,000 H-1Bs available annually so outstrips supply that, last year, the window to file for them opened on April 1st ... and slammed shut only five days, and 172,500 applications, later.
So how were the lucky winners selected? By the quality of the employers? By the quality of the individuals? Of course not. By lottery. I kid you not.
Maybe this would be reasonable if all H-1B jobs were roughly equivalent. The problem is, as I've written before, they're anything but. Let's compare, say, Facebook and Google with those well-known body shops Tata Consultancy Services and Cognizant Technology Solutions. Click on the links in the previous sentence to see their H-1B stats for last year. See anything that jumps out at you?
That's right. Facebook and Google brought in 900 and 2,800 H-1B employees, respectively, with salaries of $140,000 and $127,000. Cognizant? 3,300 at $72,000. Tata? A whopping 16,435 for a (relatively) paltry $70,000 - literally less than half what Facebook paid.