The most likely outcome is that body shops can no longer afford H-1Bs, but big tech still can.
For publicly-held large tech, the equation isn't about affordability but about maximizing shareholder dividends. Moving jobs overseas has long been the preferred means to that end.
Cheap labor exists because there is a demand for it. Body shops don't pay those wages - companies who hire those bodies from body shops do. So, body shops are going to raise prices accordingly.
"You need someone to manage your Oracle/SAP ERP systems and do a horrible job of it? And that person needs to be here locally? That will be an extra $60k from our last contract because we cannot bring in cheap bodies now." (assuming they eat $40k of the costs)
In the meantime rural medical centers will be devasted because many teams are made of H1B doctors.
H1B certainly requires more government oversight. But doing their jobs or applying critical thinking skills isn't a criteria for this administration.
Amazon has over 10k H1B workers. Think about how much money it means.
Something like 0.3% of their yearly profit.
They're already paying probably somewhere near $200k a year more. Clearly it's not for no good reason. Clearly there is some advantage to employing them here if they are already willing to pay $200k more than they have to.
An extra $100k doesn't erase whatever that value is. The question is, is employing them here worth $200k to Amazon, but not $300k? Likely the case for some employees, but almost certainly not all.
Edited to add: The local Indian economy doesn't sustain those many IBM employees. They are servicing the rest of the world.
I know as a matter of fact that my company and other companies almost exclusively create new headcounts in India/UK/Germany. US headcounts are only for replacement or as exceptions. Even some replacement headcounts are moved overseas.
As someone who works with colleagues from India (like, physically in India), I don't see any reason the company keeps me over some other random guy in India, to be honest.
