Eat me. Change H-1B's to follow a worker from job to job and there is no problem with the program. The fact that anyone who wants to hire a H-1B worker away from their company also has to have acquired a H-1B means that it is abused by companies looking for cheap labor.
Transferring an H1-B is a couple of orders of magnitude easier than getting a new H1-B. If a person is here on an H1-B already there's more friction in finding a new apartment to rent than there is in transferring the visa.
From my experience, those "transfer" applications are routinely approved because they are not subject to the H-1B cap. Sure, it will take a few weeks for USCIS to process it and will cost the employer some money, but getting a denial is pretty rare.
