I already made it clear that I am not talking about current superstars; I am talking about people who are not currently superstars but have the potential to be. H1-B holders are almost universally young, well-educated people. They are much more likely than average to end up being superstars in the future. I also think it is absurd to suggest that only people in academic or research positions can end up being superstars.
> Yes, but you misunderstand the intent. The visa has two intents -- education and for profit.
No, that is not what "dual intent visa" means. Per the first Google result: "A dual intent visa allows foreigners to be temporarily present in the United States with the known intention of possibly immigrating to the U.S. permanently. That’s significant because most temporary visas require that the visitor intend to return home."
The H1-B visa is clearly intended to serve both as a way to temporarily work in the US and as a pathway to permanent immigration.
> Then you should not be worried about a shortage of skilled workers, because we have no such shortage. There is a shortage of cheap skilled workers.
That is a matter of opinion, and I disagree with your assessment. It is a much more realistic concern that overly restrictive immigration laws will harm the competitiveness of American businesses than that adding a few tens of thousands of extra software developers to the several million software developers already present in the US will result in lowered wages.
But it isn't intended as a way for people to come in, get trained on domestic services, just so they can be outsourced later.
In any case, I fundamentally disagree that our immigration policy is too restrictive or that American businesses, which are already earning record profits, are not competitive.
There is already a visa for superstars, so you don't have to worry about that. There is also no caps on visas for academic and research positions, so you don't have to worry about that either. We are talking about H1-B.
> The H1-B visa is a dual-intent visa. It is not solely a temporary work visa. It is intended to bring skilled workers to the US and to sometimes get them to stay.
Yes, but you misunderstand the intent. The visa has two intents -- education and for profit. The education/research uses are not capped. The business uses capped. If they are a superstar, then they can get the EB visa. H1B is for middle of the road skilled workers -- eg. people slinging react code. So no need to worry about future Einsteins or superstars being blocked from entry because of H1B concerns -- that's a completely spurious argument.
> I am already in that country (the US)
Then you should not be worried about a shortage of skilled workers, because we have no such shortage. There is a shortage of cheap skilled workers, just as there is a shortage of cheap BMWs. Solving that "problem" is not the appropriate use of immigration policy, unless you believe the purpose of immigration is to arbitrage cross-country labor costs for shareholders of IP firms while our movies remain region coded and we push for stricter IP monopolies globally. When I can import medicine and music from the cheapest source around the world, we can then talk about doing the same for labor, otherwise you are just lowering costs for capital without also lowering them for labor, which results in shifting income from labor to capital -- something that is bad for any country.