Keep in mind, a family of 4 in San Francisco that earns 130k a year (family income) qualifies for direct housing subsidies. Many of these visas will be allocated to SF/valley based companies.
Yeah, most middle class families are two income now, but keep in mind, we're talking about a worker that is supposedly so valuable and in such critical shortage that we need to do an end run around the normal immigration system and empower employers to directly hire someone from overseas. We're talking about someone who can't be found among the 300 million existing US citizens or the 1.2 million new immigrants who come here annually outside of work visa programs.
Seriously, you can't afford to pay that worker $130k a year, in the most expensive city in the United States? Sounds like this position isn't quite as critical, or as hard to fill, as you're claiming.
In short, why should someone in Wisconsin get to pay only 100k when someone in NY or SF would pay $130k, or $200k? In fact, why should an employer get to hire anyone at all, even at "market rate"? Normally, we let labor markets work freely - if you can't hire a lawyer or financial analyst to work for 100k, we don't normally say there's a shortage, we say the employer needs o increase salary and work conditions to compete properly for skilled and educated workers who have the freedom to choose where they will work. We don't say, normally "oh, ok, we'll allow you to determine the circumstances under which someone is allowed to come to the US, which you can use to get them to accept less money than they'd earn if they were free to choose a different profession or employer." That goes for most immigrants to the US as well, who arrive with the right to freely choose their profession in response to personal interests and market signals.
I'm not strictly opposed to these visas, but to me, this needs to be a slam dunk case. It should be very obvious that this is a highly skilled worker. 73k, even in a low cost place, doesn't come close to this threshold. At 73k, I think employers can go ahead and compete for the people who are free to choose their employment and career (including, of course the 1.2 million immigrants who come here every year as free and full members of the work force).
If you can't convince people to write code for you for 73k a year, I'd say it's pretty clear you need to increase the salary. You aren't anywhere close to "critical employee in severe shortage" pay and work conditions. People smart enough to write complicated code have all kinds of options to earn more than 73k a year, provided they are free to do so.
I don't see how developers in SF or NY create more value just by virtue of being geographically located there. The cost of living argument IS about the free market at work, isn't it? Forget about the immigrants vs citizens aspect of it for a minute. Company A in WI could hire a resident for 90K because the resident spends only about $1000 on rent, but if the same person were to go to SFO a company B would have to pay them way more so they can afford to pay $2000 on rent. Isn't this the reason salary calculators exist? Am I missing something? I don't think this has anything to do with immigration specifically.
For instance, christmas tree light manufacturers don't locate their assembly plants in downtown san francisco. If they did, they would certainly have to pay the workers more. You just can't generate enough value this way to justify that kind of pay for christmas tree light assemblers, so the work is done elsewhere.
And if it turns out assembling christmas tree lights doesn't pay enough, and the workers who are capable of assembling christmas tree lights find higher paid work, that's not a shortage, that just means people have found higher value things to do. If the price of christmas tree lights doesn't rise to a point where it is worth hiring people, that just means people don't really value christmas tree lights as much as the other things they an spend their money on. I see no problem here.
Same with code. If you can't pay enough to convince the people capable of writing code to do this instead of something else, I have trouble believing the code you want written is all that important. Certainly not so important that you should have the power to force people to write it for you as a condition of living and working in the US!
does my emacs suddenly start producing bitcoin if i move to NYC or SF?
They can hire local talent then. All the American brogrammers that are about to face real competition now will be most likely willing to take those 100K after they lose the jobs they got thank's to "cultural fit".
Many other industries rely on foreign talent, and many cannot pay 130k, but 100k would be fine IMHO.