The problem isn't so much the H-1B program itself (although it definitely needs reforms and improvements, and there's great arguments for eliminating it entirely), the problem is that it has been horribly abused since damn near the day it was created, and the government has not only allowed this abuse, but encouraged it.
The H-1B program was created to bring in a relatively small number of highly skilled workers each year to work side by side with equally skilled American citizens, especially in the tech industries, and it has done that. But government and industry have badly abused the program by using it to bring in nearly 10 times the maximum number of foreigners that the law allows the program to do, and the 90%+ of extra illegal visas issued are almost entirely for low-skilled workers who do not even meet the qualifications of the program in the first place. In many cases, these low skill workers have been used, and are still being used, to replace higher skilled Americans because the foreigners will work for much lower wages and can be much more easily controlled because their visas can be threatened.
If the H-1B laws are enforced stringently and aggressively, meaning all of the extra workers over the maximum cap written in the law are eliminated, and all of the workers that are imported are checked vigorously to make sure they meet the qualifications required by the law, then I think the program can be salvaged and provide the benefits it was meant to provide. But there are very good arguments that it's too late to salvage it and it should be eliminated and either started over from scratch or that we should just stop importing foreign high skilled workers outside of the regular immigration pathways altogether.
The problem isn't so much the H-1B program itself (although it definitely needs reforms and improvements, and there's great arguments for eliminating it entirely), the problem is that it has been horribly abused since damn near the day it was created, and the government has not only allowed this abuse, but encouraged it.
The H-1B program was created to bring in a relatively small number of highly skilled workers each year to work side by side with equally skilled American citizens, especially in the tech industries, and it has done that. But government and industry have badly abused the program by using it to bring in nearly 10 times the maximum number of foreigners that the law allows the program to do, and the 90%+ of extra illegal visas issued are almost entirely for low-skilled workers who do not even meet the qualifications of the program in the first place. In many cases, these low skill workers have been used, and are still being used, to replace higher skilled Americans because the foreigners will work for much lower wages and can be much more easily controlled because their visas can be threatened.
If the H-1B laws are enforced stringently and aggressively, meaning all of the extra workers over the maximum cap written in the law are eliminated, and all of the workers that are imported are checked vigorously to make sure they meet the qualifications required by the law, then I think the program can be salvaged and provide the benefits it was meant to provide. But there are very good arguments that it's too late to salvage it and it should be eliminated and either started over from scratch or that we should just stop importing foreign high skilled workers outside of the regular immigration pathways altogether.