I understand people are against "economic immigrants" right now, but last time I checked most of the people that passed through Ellis Island were poor and the United States managed to grow in the last 100 years.
The fantasy that the United States can just flourish with only highly educated people working in tech is not real. We also need people to cut our grass, work on our cars, and clean our hotel rooms.
You can apply to a new green card via the new employer (or any potential employer too). Once you get through to the I-140 stage of your second GC again - provided that the new job is one similar to your previous one - you can use your same place-in-line in the GC as before.
The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc.
It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform.
In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated:
As you know, our employment-based immigration system is
afflicted with extremely long waits for immigrant visas, or
"green cards," due to relatively low green card numerical limits
established by Congress 24 years ago in 1990.
...
To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several
steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process.
[1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_...
[2] USCIS Seeks Comments on Proposed Rule Affecting Certain Employment-Based Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Visa Programs - https://www.uscis.gov/news/uscis-seeks-comments-proposed-rul...
[3] http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=USCIS-2015-0008
Main problem with H1b is low wages and lack of mobility - lose your job and you're out.
If you're paying $30000 in income tax every year, which would be lost if you had to return to your home country, there's a really good reason to just hand you a green card. $30k is a significant chunk of a useless government sinecure, after all. And if you make it based on taxes, you can be reasonably certain that it will be recurring revenue, rather than a one-time windfall. And at that income level, you're likely to be a high-expectations parent to a child who will eventually speak English and want to stay forever. So bring the spouse and kids!
As a nation, wouldn't we want to encourage as much immigration as possible from people who will be net contributors to our society? Wouldn't we want to bring their families with them, so they wouldn't be remitting their earnings back to another country? Ignoring all the irrational racism, of course. That might still be a problem.
That's what I've heard about the problem currently.
Also I wouldn't base it on federal taxes, because people with state taxes will pay less federal tax since the state tax is a federal tax deduction or similar. I would base it on total USA tax load.
Perhaps the real solution would be to approve H1B visa applications for the top N salaries. You're clearly not experiencing a labor shortage if you're not willing to pay one of the top N salaries.
My solution? Let anyone into the country as long as they can prove that they are receiving a salary of > 125,000$ /year. Or perhaps just create a fast lane immigration track for companies, where if they really really want someone to be let into the country, then they send the US government a $50k check, to skip everything, and get their VISA automatically approved.