Depends on what "train" means. Familiarizing the new guy with the source and version control system used by the company is not training, it is basic familiarization with that particular company's operations.

The Indians who earn a US income also live in the US and pay US prices for a US standard of living (talking about H1Bs). Indians who live in India and work on outsourced projects earn an Indian salary and live an Indian standard of living. It is physically impossible for an Indian to get US wages while paying Indian prices for consumer goods (they aren't Schrodinger's cats.) And, by the way, even if monetary costs in India are lower than in the US, there are a number of other hidden costs that one isn't aware of unless one lives day-to-day in India. The pollution, the traffic chaos, the low trust society, the general unreliability of people and infrastructure, make one's life extremely stressful. The typical Indian 60-year old looks and has the health of a typical American 90-year old.

Typo in the second sentence. It should say: To them, the idea of foreigners working a few years and going back is a feature, not a bug.

Different constituencies in America want different things that are incompatible. Hard core right wingers want no more immigration (i.e., green cards) or want to cut it drastically, especially for non-white people. To them, the idea of foreigners working a few years and going back is a bug, not a feature. Engineers who are not in the hard core right-wing camp would prefer exactly the opposite. More green cards and an end to the guest worker concept that they feel undercuts the labor market (they are partly right and partly wrong; H1Bs working as contractors for outsourcing companies aren't paid much, but H1Bs with MS or PhD hired from US grad schools make more than the typical American would, as they are hired for having the best skills among those interviewed). Businesses are probably divided on this. Rich SV companies and startups really do want a worldwide pool of applicants and are willing to pay top bucks for them (the Googles, Facebooks, Teslas). Others just want cheaper software and outsource their IT work to contractors. Both want more H1Bs but for different reasons. The former group would willingly support an increase in green cards instead of the H1B guest worker program; they sponsor all their H1B employees for green cards already. The latter group doesn't care about immigration at all; only the bottom line matters to them. If they can't get cheap software out of H1B contractors, they will probably offshore their entire IT work. Tell me, how do you reconcile these different priorities? Since businesses are best at lobbying, they decided to push for more H1Bs, figuring that arguing for more green cards would be a non-starter with the nativist constituency.

I call BS on that. Either the person was not on an H1B (could have been on L1, which I believe means he is an intra-company transfer paid according to the rates of his home country), or he was pulling your leg, or you are just plain lying. I was on an H1B visa a few years ago for a couple of years, having been hired out of grad school, and got paid 6 figures after being wooed by several companies.

Immigrant visas have a per-origin country quota that cannot exceed a threshold (I believe no one country can get more than 7% immigrant visas in one year). For most countries, this is all right; a qualified person applying for an immigrant visa can get it in 2-3 years. Though from an employment perspective, this is not ideal; will an employer really be willing to wait 2-3 years for a new hire to join, however skilled that person is? And will this prospective hire be willing to trust the vagaries of the INS/USCIS and assume that they will get an immigrant visa? But this is not really the main problem. The vast number of prospective hires happen to be from India and China; high populations, their countries have been focusing on STEM education, etc. I believe these two countries combined produce well more than 50% of the STEM graduates (and that includes those who obtained Masters and PhDs from US universities) who interview with, and are hired by, US companies (on the basis of merit.) Yet, the immigrant visa (green card) quotas, which are handled independent of the non-immigrant visas by the USCIS, are very few for people from these countries. Add to that the family reunification program that gives priority for immigrant visas to the family members of immigrants, and the result is that an Indian or Chinese PhD from MIT will have to wait for a decade to get a green card, even though that person may be outstanding and reputed. At least this is true for the E2 category; even E1 visas take a few years, is my understanding, for people from these countries. Also Mexico and Philippines, but for different, non-STEM, reasons.

It's a myth that an H1B visa requires proof of the absence of an equivalent US citizen who can do the job. The visa has no such constraint; it never had such a constraint. Green cards (permanent residency) do require such proof; only a subset of H1B workers are sponsored for green cards by their employers. The H1B visa was always targeted at foreigners who had no particular urge to immigrate to the US, but rather wanted US work experience on their resume, which would help them get cushy gigs back in the home country after they returned. In practice, it's evolved into being one of the channels for immigration, but companies only sponsor their most valuable employees for green cards; "Valuable" does not have to mean "best and brightest".

I've been reading about these kinds of incidents for years, and always come off wondering what "training" refers to? Surely, it does not refer to the teaching of programming concepts, architectural design concepts, or even teaching the new guy the ins-and-outs of a new (or proprietary) programming language. I would think "training" is the equivalent of pointing out: "here are the light switches", "there's the toilet", "here's our control room", and more relevant to IT "this is the access control system we use". You know, simple stuff that get the new people familiar with the environment they are stepping into, and without which knowledge they will be poking in the dark for weeks, wasting their (and everybody else's) time. Anything beyond basic familiarization ought to be the responsibility of the new hires; if the hires can't manage it on their own even after that, someone made a mistake in hiring, and the new people won't last long. Much of this discussion about H1Bs is very emotional, and quickly takes a nationalistic turn. No one bothers to understand the issues, or try to empathize with all parties involved.

You are being pedantic. By your standards, nothing would exist until a Latin word for it is not coined. A university, very loosely defined, is a meeting place for scholars and students, and one consisting of a formalized or semi-formalized rite of passage. By that definition, India had multiple universities from the early Buddhist era (4th century BCE) onwards. Taxila and Nalanda were two of the most famous ones, which had visiting scholars from as far abroad as China.

First of all, I don't feel as if a "lot of people hate us". What I meant was that you are wrong in thinking certain things about all Indians based on your experiences with a few of your co-workers (and that too, it seems, just based upon eating preferences), people who are as transient as tourists and who have little stake in adjusting heavily to a foreign culture when they are supposed to be working full-time for meagre wages. Or do you think American people who visit foreign countries happen to consider turning native their first priority?