The infographic doesn't make it clear what substantive differences exist between H1B and L1 visas. AFAICT from the text below it's more like transferring within the globocorp.

From [1]: "The new U.S. office must have a corporate relationship with your foreign entity abroad where you have been employed as a manager, executive, or worker with specialized knowledge. This means that the new U.S. office must be a parent, affiliate, subsidiary or branch of the foreign entity, and that both the U.S. office and the foreign entity must continue to share common ownership and control."

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/l-1-intracompany-transf...

One more difference is that L1 visa holders cannot change companies.

they also need to work for the company for over a year in an office abroad before applying.

That's an advantage for employers. Imagine you are bringing a employee who you know will not leave. That leads to lots of possibilities

I didn't imply the opposite. Just stating a fact that was omitted.

Not fully accurate - spouses of H1B, H4 can work now: http://www.immihelp.com/h4-visa-ead/.

H4 dependents can only work after the primaries's green card process reached certain stage which may take few years. But with L1, spouse can start work from day 1

Incorrect, the dependent has a 3 month waiting period.

you mean they become eligible only after 3 months?

Yes, as the other comment says. They become eligible to apply for EAD only after 3 months. You then need to wait for the EAD, which processing time varies depending on location.

Once EAD is issued, they can work.

Also the L2 holder has to apply for an EAD, which takes 4-6 months.

Many of them but not all. H4 EAD is for spouses of 1140 approved or 6+ years on H1 and green card process started.

That's right H4 EAD is a benefit of green card process and not just the H1b itself. However, L2 EAD is purely based on L1 and has no bearing on the GC process.

Why is the vertical scale not starting at zero? This is generally considered to be an antipattern in plotting, as it creates the wrong perception of ratios.

For general population and media consumption concentrating on 1 keyword is way better than 2 or more keywords. So if H1B is picked by politicians than it is better strategy to hammer on it instead of discussing nuances of various visa types.

IMO H1B or not lots of typical IT jobs are disappearing anyway .

But, the whole employment visas have to be reformed as a whole. For example, tightening H1b means, companies can start using L1 or Eb1c more. These work rounds are already being taken advantage of.

Your graph makes look like "L1 + spouse worker" is a little bit more than 100k.

The source document says ~78k L1 were issued in 2015, and ~86k L2, which included spouses and chidren.

How do you know how many L1 spouses are working?

It makes an assumption that 25% approximately end up working. Forgot to specify that. Will fix it. thanks

I think I recently pointed out that focusing on H1B was a red herring.

Any way, I love publicly posted salary information for every H1B applicant by company and date! http://www.h1bdata.info Way better than Glassdoor or Payscale or any of those "give us your Facebook account and a ton of information before we show you outdated base-salary-only information but since you clicked we're sure the ad worked" websites

Don't know about the history of that transparency and don't care, can probably convince Congress to extend it to other work visa types "as a compromise to study the effect on citizens" lol!