I was on H1B in the past, so let me give you a bit of my experience:
If you think it is tough for an American to find a job, guess what, it is 100x harder for the ones with H1B to get one.
Most responsible and doing well companies do not hire H1B, or at least limited it to those with master or phd degree. The reason being that these H1B holder are not in it for the salary, but for the green card that they can get through the program. These companies do pay the same wages between H1B and local citizens, and they have no problem hiring the higher quality workers (mostly more experienced American or H1B turned Americans) with better pay.
Now if there is a layoff in the company, all the H1B as well as the H1B's green card application will get into trouble. These people will leave for a more stable company, despite being lower paid, longer hours, and have to put up with [censored], to get the H1B and green card going smoothly. Companies like HP and Intel rely on very few H1B employees because of the uncertainty, and the risk that they will bring the trade secret along to the next company.
Who benefit the most? Those smaller and poorly run businesses that cannot hire any one because of low pay, bad management, in the wrong business, etc that should have gone out of business in the first place. My H1B years were spent on these places and you are there running the company because your boss / owner is so incompetent. Imagine buying used monitor that other companies scraped because your own monitor is barely visible (burnt out) by the dozen, running out of toilet paper and phone services because they are not paying the bill on time, and a GM that got fired because of cooking the book to boost his bonus.
The other type of companies that benefit from the H1B program are the Indian software consulting companies. Last year or two they submitted multiple applications for the same person and overload the H1B system, and wasted lots of approval quotas. Many companies were forced to contract out to these guys because they end up getting 60%+ of the quotas when their own employees couldn't get the visa and had to quit or go back to school. One of my co-worker who graduate from a US college couldn't get a VISA to stay and we have to switch him to part time, and he was forced to go for a master degree.
Of course, there is a new type of H1B employees that aren't interested in staying in the US for long because of the reduced opportunities recently and the booming economy back home (China, India, Philippine, Korea, etc) that they are here to gain work experience before going back to be a manager back home. US have been squeezing the H1B program to green card applications so much, that 1/2 of them have to go back at the end of 6 years. I have a few friends who think they got cheated by the US system, that they work for a low salary, for a bad boss, and in the end couldn't get a green card in return for all the [censored]. If you think the American workers got the shaft, then those H1Bers got it even worse.
Not here to start a political debate, just telling what I experienced 1st hand.
