C'mon, man. That's a pretty dumb analysis, frankly. We are dealing with degreed professionals, something this board should be more concerned with, rather than just a snapshot of 60 million workers. How many millions is that of the 60 million? And most are IT guys if you want to get more specific. You have also not taken into account that the H1B program is not a convenient one year thing. It's a visa that is, by regulation, good for up to 6 years. After that, you can extend indefinitely if you have your green card pending until the green card is worked, at which point you are no longer an H1B visa holder but a green card holder and can stay here forever.
So for the sake of your argument, let's take your 85k (which is the cap number and not accurate as a reflection of actual visas issued) and multiply it times 6 for 510k. Now let's consider that this program has been ongoing now for nearly 20 years and that many stick around to become green card holders and/or eventual citizens. For the sake of argument, let's peg that number at half, which may be low or high, I don't know. That would mean that every 2 years you have an extra year of H1B visa holders becoming a permanent part of the labor force. So in the last 16 years, you would effectively have 8 years of H1B visas permanently entrenched in the labor force, plus the 6 years of visa holders always in the US. So by my count that is 510k plus another 8 years worth, which is 680k. So well over a million basically, even if we account for things like death and retirement. And yes, I realize that some folks go back to India or wherever, but I also realize that your 85k number is low. Point being you are way lowballing the effect of H1Bs on wage stagnation in the professional workforce. Congressmen and businessmen tend to look at the numbers like you do, however, and fail to realize that, oh yeah, these folks are staying around for the long term. More power to them for doing the legal thing, but the H1B visas should be adjusted to account for that, and certainly should've been adjusted anyway to account for economic doldrums.