I'm coming to this late, but I do want to point out that the US takes 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year, in a process that has essentia

I'm coming to this late, but I do want to point out that the US takes 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year, in a process that has essentially nothing to do with the H1B or employer controlled work visa programs. These immigrants are free to choose what they study and where they work. High tech doesn't like that, because smart educated people who have the right to choose can find better options than staring at a computer screen looking at JIRA tickets in a big loud open office, in a field where they get elbowed out after age 40. So high tech has lobbied for an alternative immigration system, that they control though their HR departments, where they get to decide who gets to come here and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain. I'm honestly bewildered when I read arguments like the one you just made, that opposing the H1B visa means you're opposed to immigration. I think that immigration has been a marvel for the US, but that pretty much every system we've tried for bringing in immigrants who are not free to choose their job has been an unmitigated disaster. The H1B is hardly the worst of these, but because it doesn't preserve the freedom of the individual, it is ultimately unfixable. It must be replaced by a system that allows the immigrant to decide what to study, where to work, how to live. It actually turns out we have a system like that, it's called immigration, and we take 1.2 millions people a year under it. From the way Silicon Valley talked it, you'd think that entire path didn't even exist.