My first job out of college was working at an immigration firm. You're spot on. It's all a scam between the company and the lawyers to string along the H-1 or L-1 holder. They need to get rid of the entire prevailing wage system and set the minimum wage to $150k, then they'd really only be bringing over individuals with specialized knowledge instead of what they are doing now (as you accurately describe above).

They need to do what Trump told them to do: have a fixed pool of H1B visas, and distribute them to the eligible applicants with the highest paying jobs here in the US. That's the only sensible solution that auto-regulates and stops all kinds of abuse. Moreover, to reduce abuse further, H1B workers who are already in the country should get greater mobility between companies and 1 year grace period if they leave the company that sponsored them for H1B. Currently if you get fired in retaliation (or otherwise lose employment), you're fucked and you have to leave the country in 2 weeks. There's absolutely no good reason for this to be immediate other than to foster abuse by employers. It's also non-trivial and dangerous to attempt to change employers.

Didn't President Trump also say he wanted to mandate paying H1B's the same you would an American? Seems like that would get rid of a lot of the abuse.

The current system causes trouble for a lot of people in many fields not limited to tech. Some friends have had trouble getting a residency while Indian nationals who come in on H1B are favored by the Indian doctors who deal with hiring at the hospitals they did their clinicals at in NY.

That is already the case, but only nominally. You can't hire someone into the job from abroad and pay them less. Hence the futzing with levels and job requirements and hiring "junior" employees who aren't junior at all.