I think that the non-abusers of the program are truly in need of people with special skills that can't be found. However, the "average programmer" salary is ac

I think that the non-abusers of the program are truly in need of people with special skills that can't be found. However, the "average programmer" salary is actually very effective when looking at the aggregate. If a programmer has skills that can't be found in a given location, you would expect them to command a very high market value, rather than an average, let alone below average market value. Tata, Infosys, etc have ruined the H1B for what it was supposed to be used for. The government's useless bureaucratic oversight allows companies to claim that a journeyman SQL Server DBA is impossible to find in the US and hire from a body-shop instead. The biggest victims of this are the start-ups who truly need to bring in top-caliber talent and can't get a visa in the lottery.