Videoconferencing, especially with people you've never met from a foreign culture whom by the way you've just made unemployed, is just not the same. Those meetings would go on and on, and nothing would get accomplished.
I'm a consultant working remotely and all the work I do with clients is done remotely and I can tell you: it works for some companies and doesn't for others. It works for some groups and not for others. It doesn't matter the company size or structure. Smaller companies or bigger companies, top down or bottom up, it doesn't matter. It's the culture. Some companies do it better, some do it worse. I've seen companies of 300,000+ remote employees, and companies where remote working for their 50 employees is forbidden because it's a disaster.
One thing I've never seen work, however, is differing time zones working well together. There's always some kind of schedule conflict that could be resolved if everyone was taking lunch at the same time or getting off work at the same time.
I agree that US - India is quite harsh. I work from the UK with many coworkers from China, which is kind of similar. It is hard for them -- they mainly work evenings so they have some overlapping time with folks in the US and Europe.
If you don't feel that videoconferencing and email work better with people one knows, with whom one has a working relationship, and who don't actively dislike one for "stealing their jobs", then we simply have a different experience of videoconferencing and email. I concede that text chats are a pretty effective way to work, but I suspect that the challenges I mentioned would still impede progress.
That's hard, but again that has nothing to do with visas or immigration. Suppose Disney had sacked all their expensive workers and hired juniors (from the US) and asked the experienced workers to train them up. Same situation for those employees.
