Theoretically, the H1B application requires evidence that the employee is receiving market-standard pay for the role fulfilled. However, there's a gradual effect over time of course when there's a lot of expats who are willing to work at the lower bound of that pay. So Re: H1B, I pretty much agree with you, and I think immigrant employee visas need to be restructured to really punish the Wipros/Infosys' that just import manslaves that are fed change to output code, lowering the average engineer's pay.

I was raising the point regarding my position because that seemed to be the thesis of the article -- for people more in my position than for employees of companies on the scale of Microsoft, etc. We are not entering the US with the objective of taking other people's jobs. The only reason I applied for the H1B was because it was the legit path with the most reasonable chance to get cleared. I think it's the wrong kind of visa for a founder to attempt to get, there just isn't a better one.

So YC and people like me are hoping for a visa similar to the O1A, except right now that is expensive to file, vague in the conditions that need to be cleared, and usually needs you to foot a fat lawyer bill too. And it's a bit of a stretch to be applied to founders. Essentially, the existing visas are all hardly different from 10-15 (or more) years ago, times have changed, and the government has done nothing to accommodate the changes in the economy.