So why can't lawmakers agree on preventing these consulting companies from applying for H1bs?

Corruption all the way through:

US Congress/Senate: "oh wait India is going to buy defence h/w worth $47B, we got to get in on the action"

Indian consulting companies: "dear Indian politician, we get a lot of money through Forex/labor arbitrage, let us help you get rich. In return protecting us from the fallout of these pesky articles is a national interest and oh hey how about getting us another 2000 acres of land out there."

Indian politicians and babus to US counterparts: "yep you can sell us your mil. h/w, but first let your contractors bribe us and then let our IT companies bribe you"

Pretty simplistic and only focuses on the corruption angle, while there are definitely other issues as well, but does bring up why the US can't just say "hey no visas for you".

This kind of a system is more damaging to India than the US at the macro level. Since it makes Indian companies and people who work for them incapable of doing something original and working on really hard problems in our backyard.

The attitude which it engenders is "oh hey, we can always stay in business by selling ourselves cheap and replacing Americans." This party will sooner or later come to an end. At which point hopefully a lot of such Indian companies will go extinct and only the best will survive.

At the personal level, the Americans who got fired are going to be more resilient and will come out on top of the situation, however great their pain may be in the moment.

Oh, one more thing, this is not the only threat faced by employment in the US, there's automation too.

So, hatred of something, say Indian consulting companies, or people employed by them, immigrants in general, against robots or automated systems is no solution. I say this since this is the most knee-jerk reaction.

The only way anyone hope to cope with this is by not expecting it to get any easy. Not expecting ease or having a sense of entitlement. But by being open to learning, growth, reinvention and hope.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/indi...