It's not that hard to switch jobs once you have an H1B: The hard part is to do so while trying to get a green card.
Ultimately, the tremendous wait times for everyone in the 00s, and now the tremendous lines only for a few countries, come down to the maximum number of green card numbers being vastly inferior to the number of people that qualify for said visas and are already living and working in the US.
Even in cases where your employer isn't trying to actively exploit you, the difficulty at changing jobs during the green card process depresses wages. I come from Europe, but I came in as an EB3 in 2000, so I had to wait a good 7 years. I was the highest paid engineer in our small department, and the only foreigner, but I was worth a lot more in the open market than what my employer paid. My salary tripled in the next three years afterwards, as I was paid an entry level salary while being qualified for being a principal engineer at a far bigger shop.
But everyone talks about the H1B program, instead of just opening permanent residency to people that are, in practice, already permanent residents, just with less rights.
There is no per-country quota for permanent residency, instead there is a worldwide quota of 120,000 employment-based green cards per year, and a law that says "no more than 7% immigrants with the same country of birth" (Note: country of birth, not citizenship).
The only countries that hit this limit are India, China, Philippines, and Mexico. The 120,000 global quota still applies to the rest of the World. Hence, there still are these potential long-ish delays, even if you're not from one of those four countries.
Ultimately, the tremendous wait times for everyone in the 00s, and now the tremendous lines only for a few countries, come down to the maximum number of green card numbers being vastly inferior to the number of people that qualify for said visas and are already living and working in the US.
Even in cases where your employer isn't trying to actively exploit you, the difficulty at changing jobs during the green card process depresses wages. I come from Europe, but I came in as an EB3 in 2000, so I had to wait a good 7 years. I was the highest paid engineer in our small department, and the only foreigner, but I was worth a lot more in the open market than what my employer paid. My salary tripled in the next three years afterwards, as I was paid an entry level salary while being qualified for being a principal engineer at a far bigger shop.
But everyone talks about the H1B program, instead of just opening permanent residency to people that are, in practice, already permanent residents, just with less rights.