I think if H1-B, and skilled visas in general, was truly about skill level and best fit, fine. However, every situation (like Disney) where visas are used to bring in labor to be trained to replace technical workers who may not necessarily be the HN crowd, but are a vital part of business, should be disallowed. If a company wants to offshore, fine, but it shouldn't use the Visa system to have workers being replaced training their replacements.
I don't really know if skill level should be the only consideration. I think that every country has an obligation to consider its citizens. I'm not saying that citizenship should be the only consideration - but I do think that it should be a strong one. Here in the US, I know many technical people who hit mid-forties and couldn't find a job anymore, in spite of having great technical skills. So maybe there should be some obligation to make sure that a country's citizens are doing OK before allowing skill to be the primary consideration? I don't know -- but I do know that something is wrong with the way we're doing it now.
I personally hate the H1-B/visa system for anything but skilled graduates being targeted for specific roles. I also hate the loss of the social contract where companies actually invested employees and helped them grow.
IBM, Disney and others are trying for a race to the bottom.
I also know that it is incumbent on people in our field to stay on top of things, continue to learn, etc. But not everywhere has the same access to knowledge (or may not know how to find it) as those of us already naturally curious.
In no form should Visas be granted to bring workers over to be trained by those replacing them. Unless maybe it's something insane like $100k/head going into training programs. But, that's all fantasy on my part.
