The H-1B was not abolished. It was repriced and re-aimed.

Post H-1B runs the numbers most headcount plans have not caught up with. FY2027 registrations fell to 211,600 from 343,981, a 38.5% drop in a single year. Selection stopped being random in February: higher wage levels now receive more entries, and only 17.7% of selections sat at the lowest band. A proposed DHS rule would add $103,265 to every cap-subject petition. The channel still works. It works for senior, credentialed, expensive hires, which is not the tier most teams are actually short of.

Meanwhile the domestic junior pipeline is thinning. Employment of 22-to-25-year-olds in AI-exposed roles sits 19% below trend, and 71% of US software posting growth came from senior roles. Your mid-tier is squeezed from both sides at once. This paper supplies a three-question Relocation Test for deciding which roles genuinely need a US person, an honest assessment of four capacity channels including where each one fails, and the headcount threshold above which your own offshore entity beats a partner. Rocketeams is one of those four, and the paper says where it is the wrong one. Read it before your next headcount plan.