The most likely outcome is that body shops can no longer afford H-1Bs, but big tech still can.
For publicly-held large tech, the equation isn't about affordability but about maximizing shareholder dividends. Moving jobs overseas has long been the preferred means to that end.
I think the newness (some period before 2020) of tech in general tended to intimidate those legacy shareholder groups who got in early. And I suspect that early shareholding was often dominated by employees, etc (not sure tho).
I think those interests plus the proximity to adjacent industries created strong interest in US Gov's (now-former) incentives to create to bring many of the best minds here.
We've dialed back all the above. We've put truly hostile interests in power that are weaponizing Gov assets & millions of supporters - against every manifestation of immigration. Our actual outcomes are flavored with rising Gov violence and populist animosity toward (mostly non-white) immigrants and those associated with them.
Considering what and where we are, I absolutely see this high-paying, historical class of jobs being shipped overseas.
Cheap labor exists because there is a demand for it. Body shops don't pay those wages - companies who hire those bodies from body shops do. So, body shops are going to raise prices accordingly.
"You need someone to manage your Oracle/SAP ERP systems and do a horrible job of it? And that person needs to be here locally? That will be an extra $60k from our last contract because we cannot bring in cheap bodies now." (assuming they eat $40k of the costs)
In the meantime rural medical centers will be devasted because many teams are made of H1B doctors.
H1B certainly requires more government oversight. But doing their jobs or applying critical thinking skills isn't a criteria for this administration.
Amazon has over 10k H1B workers. Think about how much money it means.
Something like 0.3% of their yearly profit.
They're already paying probably somewhere near $200k a year more. Clearly it's not for no good reason. Clearly there is some advantage to employing them here if they are already willing to pay $200k more than they have to.
An extra $100k doesn't erase whatever that value is. The question is, is employing them here worth $200k to Amazon, but not $300k? Likely the case for some employees, but almost certainly not all.
>while paying a third of the salary
If they're paying $300k, they are paying $200k extra to employ that person in the US.
