Yeah, that's why the idea that H1Bs need to be restricted will help with US employment is remarkably stupid.
There are a few companies that abuse (abused?) the H1B program but that was always a small but visible percentage, but more importantly, actions taken under the Obama administration had drastically reduced the abuse.
The much greater percentage are employees who studied in the US, or worked with companies in India and then had them transfer to the US. Eliminating the H1B visa simply means that they will now do the same work from India or Canada instead, further reducing the number of jobs in the US.
This is pretty much what I've seen. If you invest time and money in opening a branch office and interviewing full-time staff, you'll find sharp and dedicated people like you would here. But you cannot shortcut this process by paying a no-name body shop, because you will get "deliverables" that obviously weren't tested at all because they don't compile.
So many companies have R&D offices in India, Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, Samsung etc. If you are asking move the entire company over here, that won't make sense since you need to hire brass for representation. It's the middle layer that is costly & can be moved off.
We just hired an engineer in India who so far seems really promising. As a start-up sized organization I think you can do really well if you look in the right places. If I had to build a team of 100 people in a limited amount of time I would probably be less confident.
I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I have worked at a startup that used a firm in Ukraine which actually did really great work, however. It was perhaps more expensive than India, but still much cheaper than the US.
I am not aware of anyone who has succeeded at this in practice. Do you know anyone?