The situation now is radically different. In the late 2000s/early 2010s, most H1B applications got approved (something like 80%). For a time before that, the H1B cap wasn't usually maxed out and any application would succeed. If I'm being blunt this is because of one country. H1Bs are dominated by this country. This country makes up 75% of applications and without these, H1Bs would actually be undersubscribed.
The significant shift comes a lot from how this country has massive systems in place to perform wage arbitrage through IT consultancies. Compared to Chinese industrial outsourcing (which requires capex), wage arbitrage is pure profit in that there's almost no overhead. So these IT companies got phenomenally rich. These companies have a US branch, usually having a manager based in the US while the others are based in India. So it's no longer getting the best and brightest through H1B, but just a way to make money off the vast difference in economic conditions between a third and first world country. And there's a direct incentive to depress the economic conditions of workers, because that's money right there. Then this goes into overdrive when many US companies realize it's even cheaper to do it themselves and set up shop in this country.
What happened to the US industrial base/blue collar workers is happening right now to white collar workers, except it'll go much faster because there's no physical equipment to move.
I remember. The year that it started maxing out was from 2013.
We all know how to solve this problem e.g. ranked by compensations maybe with some restrictions and diversifying occupations a bit. We know which companies abuse it. The number of H1B with their salaries is public.
Yet this article from Bernie grand-stands random stuff.
