The only way you could say an H1B is a path to immigration is for the case where a non-immigrant meets a spouse and get a green card through marriage. That's what happened to me, but this is really just by accident. Someone under a student visa could experience the same outcome for example.
You sait it yourself, the power of companies over H1Bs is overwhelming. Upon termination, an H1B has to leave the country in the following 24 hours, there is no "grace period" even though it's a widespread myth.
1. do masters in the US
2. work on OPT until I am fortunate enough to be picked in H1B lottery, or until my OPT runs out, whichever comes first
3. IF I get picked in H1B lottery, apply for PR
4. wait 4-8 years for my category to be current
5. eventually get PR
short of an investor visa, marrying someone who is a citizen, qualifying for EB1, or applying from abroad and waiting 10 years, how else do I get a green card?
An H1B may be "simpler", but considering the lottery stats it's far from being a given. I surely am glad I got mine a while ago before the H1B program became so crazy, with the CAP being reached in literally hours.
OTOH, in my (limited) experience, I have worked closely with a total of 4 H1B employees, and at least 3 of them are now permanent residents or citizens. I can't speak to the overall frequency of this happening, but that's my anecdata.
Do you happen to know if all your co-workers got their residency through employment ?
I only know one H1B who is attempting to get a GC through her company, she started the process 3 years ago and is not done yet.
The US is a nation full stop and we can write whatever laws we please without regard to when people arrived here in the first place.
Are Madagascar, Mauritius and Haiti also disallowed from having immigration restrictions because they were also populated in the Modern era?
Which is why they need to be done away with. If we still want the talent (and why shouldn't we, brain fill is good), we need a way for them to enter which does not tie them to an employer.
Technically, most Americans were born in America.
I don't think there's anything wrong with sponsoring an H1-B for a talented and qualified person who wants to live in the US. There's room, and there are jobs, and complaining about immigrants is just stupid.
That said, the H1-B gives companies way too much leverage over their workers. In a "restructuring" of my former employer (aka entering the drain-spiral) , the NYC office was closed and most people were offered the "opportunity" to relocate to Sacramento, or take severance. Not a single person relocated.... except the lone H1-B, who had a new baby and didn't feel like he had any choice because he could lose his visa otherwise. That kind of coercive force is a sign of a broken power dynamic, due to a broken law.