I think there's a real shortage in software industry driving what you see. H1Bs come from mainly two sources - OPT students and oversea outsourcing company bringing in contractors. The US companies have incentives to hire contractors, mainly for shitty IT projects that no Americans like to do, at low labour costs no Americans willing to take. The OPT students is a result of both aggressive revenue generation for the US education industry, as well as the "American dream" ideal - which I think is a result of US culture influence (mostly movies and drama shows) rather than reality. I now realized that US is far more backwards than I thought. The US justice system, medical system and general racial discrimination. Digressions aside, US general population should far more outnumber the H1Bs but it baffles me that when we get qualified resumes, usually it's as much as 80% to 90% foreigners. (for junior positions. For seniors, many of these people already got green cards) There seems to be just huge shortage from US local people to study Computer Science.