In the early 1990s a good software engineer was paid $40K starting salary, and good companies like Sun Microsystems paid $45K. If you adjust that for inflation it is around $100K. But good companies in silicon valley today pay $120K plus stock grants (so around $170K or so), and Meta and Google pay much more.
So software engineer salaries have gone up dramatically in the last 35 years H-1B visa has been around. In fact, the H-1B visa is the reason the salaries have gone up. Without it the industry would be stagnant, just like non-tech S&P 500 companies and most companies in Europe in the same time period.
Are you trying to argue that increased supply of labor is responsible for increasing wages?
As others have said, H1-B has been good for companies, and bad for American workers. The same companies who were found to be colluding to keep wages down.
Europe is stagnant because of regulation, not because of immigration.
> Are you trying to argue that increased supply of labor is responsible for increasing wages?
I am saying the reason silicon valley exists is because of the immigration of the smartest people from around the world. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US.
Consider the seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need"). It was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration been bad for American workers? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, without them the center of tech would be Beijing.
So software engineer salaries have gone up dramatically in the last 35 years H-1B visa has been around. In fact, the H-1B visa is the reason the salaries have gone up. Without it the industry would be stagnant, just like non-tech S&P 500 companies and most companies in Europe in the same time period.