Yeah but the number of H1-Bs per year (65000, some of which are reserved for Chile or Singapore) isn't set by the market, but arbitrarily by the government. Why is that number set in stone regardless of economic climate? It was obviously more than enough during the 2009-2012 slump, when there was no lottery, but not enough now.

Political reasons. There is a segment of America that believes that's already too much immigration for a group of people that don't share their skin color and will be making more money than them.

I'd rather see the caps disappear too, but changing from a lottery to an auction seems politically achievable (particularly since it helps Apple/Google/Facebook, all of which have strong lobbying arms, while hurting TCS/Infosys/Wipro, who most Americans would be happy to see disappear), while declaring open-season on tech immigration would engender strong resistance from people who have nothing to do with tech.

I just find it weird that every year, the US gives 55,000 green cards to random people with high school education via the green card lottery, compared to 65,000 temporary work visas to much more educated people, yet it's the latter that's contentious!

My girlfriend has a PhD from an ivy league university, and even she didn't get an H1-B!

The majority of the House voted to eliminate the DV lottery and release the H1-B cap on graduates of American grad schools. There's currently an extra 20k H1-Bs for foreign grads of American schools and that cap would be lifted.

That would be a great compromise. Ph. D.'s instead of high school grads is a good trade. But it was lost among the politics of higher profile illegal alien amnesty negotiations. And then the amnesty didn't go anywhere either.

I think Trump may have mentioned this compromise at the last debate -- even he liked it.

The DV lottery is a good thing. It keeps America culturally rich by giving folks from countries that usually don't emigrate to the US an easy path to citizenship.

This American Life had a good show about a DV winner from Somalia:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/560/a...

>the salary needed to get an H1B will fall to zero

Except the job market isn't limited to immigrants, and not all immigrants are equal in quality. The bottom isn't zero, it's the average wage for U.S. citizens, because otherwise you'll drive down the wages for U.S. citizens.

You will get H1B shops opening in remote, rural locations and then using the immigrants to consult in other, more expensive locations. The goal is to get qualified immigrants to work directly for companies at those company locations.

So don't adjust it for cost-of-living, as I proposed in a sibling comment. The reason cost-of-living is higher in the Bay Area and NYC is because firms there are more productive; if you want to maximize economic value from highly-skilled immigrants, they should be working for those companies in those locations.

Then you'll drive down wages for U.S. citizens in those higher cost of living locations. The H1B shops won't open up in rural locations, they'll open up next to door to the companies and put the U.S. citizens out of jobs.

The effect will be basically to add an extra 65,000 workers to the tech labor force available in big tech cities.

Speaking as a tech worker in Silicon Valley, I don't care. Everybody who works in tech here makes enough; indeed, one of the reasons why the cost-of-living is so high is because there's broad-based prosperity among techies that drives up the cost of basic necessities like housing. If tech salaries fell, that would actually put less pressure on the non-tech population here, who are the ones who are really hurting.

It'd be far less disruptive than the current system, which puts that pressure on software engineers working for big companies in say, Minneapolis, where the average software engineer salary isn't much more than the general population.

It would be way more disruptive than the current system. You'll get more stories about companies laying off IT workers for cheaper immigrants, like at Disney (who recanted after public backlash).

Maybe your employer values you, but I'm guessing someone can do your job for less, especially if there is a H1B visa value added to it.

The whole problem is that H1B shops are gaming the system, and with a national auction, it gives them more leeway to game it further.