I would seriously doubt that most H1 workers come from US colleges. It is a common knowledge that most H1s go to Tata/Infosys and friends.

Also, I would wonder: 1. How much of those foreign graduates went to college solely for a visa. 2. I would also expect that those graduates have much lower expectations from the life style. Young men don't really need a lot of money and have a lot of time to spend at work.

Tata/Infosys etc are some of the largest single employers of H-1Bs, but collectively it really does seem that the majority of new H-1Bs every year are in fact issued to people already in the country on F-1 student visas.

Go ahead and ask any immigrant who had a H-1B about their path. I am confident you will come to the same conclusion.

I am 100% certain you have a selection bias. Imagine if you worked in Tata/Infosys and started asking around.

From my experience most h1s are imported by vendors. I've seen a lot of really small "consulting companies" who does this. I had heard over and over again that most regular companies are terrified of having to deal with H1s, due to extra cost and lots of uncertainty.

Selection bias or not - I am saying across any employers out there, go ahead and ask folks. Maybe you don't realize how many people in your companies are or were on H-1B and came via this route.

The H-1B program is heavily used by graduates from US institutions.

I would welcome someone actually studying this rigorously. I am confident my observations will hold. There is also no evidence to assume that Indian consulting services occupy the majority of H-1Bs.

They might have the same expectations, but their manager certainly knows that they are visa dependent and can assign a higher workload to them than they would to their peers who have green cards or US citizenship.

(Some of these peers might be their classmates from a US university, who got their green cards near-instantly by virtue of being born in a smaller country).

It is really nice if you actually work on site of company that holds your visa. A lot of H1s work in consulting companies that place them with the clients. These people are second-class citizens in the office, have much lower salary and less benefits. I've seen a lot of people who came to a company from some low-cost of living state - and being posted in California with the salary that is calculated based on that state. Also, those people with their families get tossed across the States really unceremoniously.