I would like to see the 'value' taken from the point of view of the employer; how much is an H1B visa worth in terms of cost savings over a local employee?
It is very expensive to hire an H1-B compared to a US resident. The only way for it to be cheaper would involve fraud: paying a worker less than prevailing wage, which would require cooking your books, lying to US Immigration, and getting into a lot of trouble. (As is the case for a few big out-sourcing companies recently)
Filing fees are high ($5k+ over 6 years), as is the cost in lawyers (probably similar), auditing, and time consumption. It is impossible to keep an employee on H1-B indefinitely, so generally they will also go through the Green Card process, which is also expensive and time consuming.
Generally companies will offer a relocation package, which is also very expensive when it's international, and have partnerships with banks (having zero US credit sucks) and other services to get employees settled.
The idea that hiring an H1-B is a cost-saver is utterly bunk, and needs to stop spreading. (Other than fraud)
For large institutions that have streamlined and amortized the costs of hiring H1-Bs, your assertions regarding cost ineffectiveness are not accurate. I say this through past direct experience working as a hiring manager inside several in the financial services industry, where the benefits of bringing in H1-Bs to reduce net cost were a frequent topic of conversation.
At least in our limited experience we aren't saving any money, and that's not the driving factor. When the best person for the job needs a visa, that's what we do. It typically costs us $5k+/year in filing and legal fees on top of salary actually, so we pay MORE for H1B employees.
Well, it's hard to quantify, but I'm guessing most of these employers derive tremendous value from having an employee they can basically own, and not have to worry about them leaving for a better company for a number of years. Obviously companies like Google and Facebook treat their employees well, but many of these visas are going to companies which are not Google or Facebook.
