How many non-h1bs did they hire in that fiscal year? How many h1bs did they lay off?

> It makes no sense to lay off H1Bs only to immediately re-hire them afterwards.

"It doesn't make sense to lay off programmers only to immediately rehire them afterwards", yet that has been happening for the past 4 years in every company.

It does if you stop seeing them as labels like 'H1Bs' or 'Programmers' and start seeing them as human beings with particular skills and strengths and weaknesses or members of particular teams (who get grown or cut at the very high-level whims of directors or VPs, without any regard for who is on them.)

Laying someone, or a team off happens for any one of a million reasons, most of which have fuck all to do with their immigration status.

You're mixing a combination of prejudice with a poor understanding of how businesses actually operate. When some corporate shithead chooses which team to cut in half, they aren't looking at the immigration status ratio in them. And for these mass layoffs, the team's direct and next level managers have next to zero say in them.