My girlfriend is Japanese on an H1 visa for a Big-4 accounting firm Japanese practice. We've had a couple of scares that she might not get the H1-B due to quota

My girlfriend is Japanese on an H1 visa for a Big-4 accounting firm Japanese practice. We've had a couple of scares that she might not get the H1-B due to quota limits (fortunately, last year nobody was hiring so there was no lottery). They run a straight-out lottery every year, and back in '08, they ran a lottery, and over 150,000 people applied, and through random selection, only 65,000 people from the 150K pool would be selected. But the H1-B program is by no means as easy as you think it is. And you know what? H1-B labor isn't cheap. My girlfriend is paid $10K more because she speaks Japanese and can communicate with Japanese clients. You actually have to prove to USCIS that you are paying at least market rate, if not more than market rate because of a shortage of labor. I hire people on a regular basis, and I am very familiar with the H1-B process, having seen two of my team members being forced back home because they failed to proceed with the process from the quota lottery. Again, it's not a binary problem. There are obviously abuser of the H1-B program, and there are businesses, even industries, that benefit from immigrants. You know what really pushed US innovation forward in the last 50 years? I believe immigrants pushed US innovation more than any thing else. Charles K. Kao, a naturalized American, made the US his home and won a Nobel last year for his work in optics during the 70s. Sun Microsystems founder is German, and so is Peter Thiel. William Boyle of Bell Labs. Londoner, now American, Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School. Taiwan immigrant David Ho for his work in AIDS. Hell, Einstein was a US immigrant.