H1B is ripe with abuse - this article by Bloomberg says that half of all H1-B visas are used by Indian staffing firms that pay significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing:
- https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-h1b-visa-middlemen-c...
If the US loses its massive lead in the network effects of a large labor pool, the amount of work in the US will shrink, both by moving to other countries and less overall innovation.
This is not a beneficial move for most software engineers.
How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.
There is a global competition for coming to Western Europe, Canada, and the US
As someone who lived in all three geographies and interacted with immigrants who lived in there, here is my raw take:-
Western Europe:- Love it and people are so nice but they are also (I am sorry to say) racist. Proof:- How many immigrant CEO's do you see from companies based in Western Europe? The top 4 largest tech companies in the US have two indian CEO's for more than 10 years now.
Canada:- Super nice and immigrant friendly more than the US, but the size of the country (approx 10% of the US) doesn't have the financial/economic/social infrastructure that is needed to support a large number of immigrants. Also tech salaries are miserable compared to the US
US:- For all its faults, US is truly the only country where immigrants looking for a better future can immigrate and assimilate into. For how long this lasts remains to be seen but I don't think that is going to change anytime soon.