Quite right. $60K in 1989 would be $117K in today's dollars by CPI. But CPI might be a little bit optimistic. I'd peg it to the rate of real estate inflation :)

There are a couple of easy solutions, increasing the min salary is one. This works for the tech sector but may not for some others. Other solutions include:

1. Do not provide a lottery. Approve by highest salary per occupational code/section. This will make sure wages are "high". 2. Mandate that beneficiaries of the H1B actually start employment and receive pay within 2 months of approval. This will ensure that companies don't just "hoard" H1B's. 3. Mandate a minimum of 1 years' work in the US per entry into the country unless employment is terminated due to forced loss.

The program has been misused. It's high time that is rectified.

Or give the visas to the jobs with the highest 85,000 salaries instead of using a lottery.

So H1Bs would end up only working in NYC, Bay Area etc and only for the big players. Not good either.

I guess they'll just have to settle for (horrors!) American workers.

Meh. If H1B were reshaped to actually be for specialist workers as it was intended (at least by some), then that's a lot easier said than done. I got to the US on a temporary work visa (not H1B because of loosing the lottery), and I'd find positions for somebody with my and a bunch of other specializations several times over.

By auctioning based on salary you're preferring areas with absurd costs of living - which is a) not where you necessarily need to get more people making the problem worse b) reinforcing economic inequality between areas of the country.

If there's a company needing some specialist somewhere with a saner cost of living, and they tried to find such a specialist, offering above market wages, what exactly is the benefit of not them having to pay twice or thrice the effective salary of somebody in SF/NYC?

You can always adjust salaries for cost of living in the area to have a more apples to apples comparison.

Ugly side to it is that non H1B salaries growth is behind inflation.