I was going to say exactly this. As an ex-H1B myself working for a top firm, I can guarantee you I was in no way top of the line at the time. I was very much eq

I was going to say exactly this. As an ex-H1B myself working for a top firm, I can guarantee you I was in no way top of the line at the time. I was very much equivalent to every other average USA top 5 CS school graduate working with me at the company, and that's to say, not particularly impressive in any way. Moving to SF/SV and working with the startup and open source communities has really opened my eyes to what a "top engineer" really means, and I sure as hell wasn't one (or surrounded by them) at BigCorp. Real top talent is really hard to get hold of, and the dozens of thousands of H1Bs are absolutely not that top 5%. The way I see it, H1B is a way to get slightly cheaper decent labor for big enterprise firms, and you occasionally luck out and get a few great gems in there. Even better if you can lock them in to your company for 10 years waiting for the green card to get approved.