Even paid identically, a company might prefer H1Bs for retention purposes. Having an indentured serf who's difficult for other companies to hire and is at constant risk of deportation if they lose their job is a winning prospect for the worst companies.

As my manager at Amazon once told me, “Amazon prefers H1Bs because they take more abuse.”

It also prevents wages from rising, can't find anymore local talent at 80K/year so you hire H1B at that wage. If that didn't happen, wages would rise until they found someone local. I think something like equal pay and then a 10-20% fee that is funneled into american education/up-skilling efforts.

Wages must rise to simulate local supply. If instead a foreign worker is hired and wages do not rise the local supply is not stimulated and the foreign worker being a short term solution causes a growing long-term problem: a growing inadequate local supply of high skilled labor.

And if foreign workers are a "better deal" because they take more abuse (due to terms of their immigration) this further disincentives fair competition and makes the long-term problem larger.

A great way to circumvent this is to build a large headquarters in an undesirable location. "No American software engineers are applying for my job in <random midwest town where I will be the only software employeer>! I need H1bs!"

Didn’t IBM try this with Dubuque?

What if they're bringing the average salary down for everyone else because they can, thanks to h1b?