That's kind of already happened. Since the recession almost all new jobs created were in cities and metro areas, and mostly to educated workers.
Rural and middle America have this problem all on their own: skilled labor does not want to live in rural and middle America. Especially young skilled workers. There's even the concept of rural brain drain, as the top 5 % are sure to leave right after they're done high school.
I'm unsure about this, and think it's kind of a chicken and the egg problem. I know tons of people who are from the midwest that would prefer to be there, but tend to flock to the coast simply because it's hard to find as rigorous of a professional environment back home.
Edit: Now that I'm thinking about it a little more I can maybe sympathize a little bit. I prefer to live in rural areas in some ways due to my hobbies, but I'm never going to as the economics of a tech company, or even a company that needs skilled, educated workers makes no sense in rural areas. So there's something to the want vs. choice angle, but what one fantasizes about has little to do with economic realities. Plenty of people want high paying low skilled manufacturing jobs to be a thing again, that doesn't mean it's realistically going to happen.
I'm not suggesting that a headquarters needs to be in these smaller cities either, but often times right now, there isn't even a satellite office with any engineering.
Yes, that's the point. Skilled labor immigration is for skilled labor.
It should not by a subsidy to companies that cannot afford to pay prevailing wages and/or are unwilling to invest in their workforce.
> This will deprive rural and middle America of the skilled labor that they need to survive.
Middle America will be fine; Chicago, KC, Pittsburgh, etc. can and do compete with the coasts for skilled labor!
That said, I could get behind a rule that adjusts for cost of living so that e.g. 100k in Pittsburgh or KC == 200k in SF. That seems fair.
As for rural America, there's a reason these areas can't attract companies or talent.
> As for rural America, there's a reason these areas
> can't attract companies or talent.
The fact that the concerns of rural communities are summarily dismissed when making policy was one of the big contributing factors to the election victories of both Brexit and Trump. (Possibly more due to resentment rather than as a rational response, but that's irrelevant.) Urban vs Rural is becoming one of the more significant divisions in this country, as wealth consolidation favors urban.
And, more fundamentally, there are people who live there. The actions of a democratic government are supposed to be for the benefit of its people. That includes the people who live in rural communities. Policy that lets the economic advantage of urban areas snowball more is something that should be given more thought than "it wouldn't matter anyways, those places suck."
Maybe there isn't a solution, or maybe this policy in particular isn't the best place to address it, but it deserves at least a modicum of thought rather than a dismissal that is, frankly, disdainful. Those places do suck, but we should treat that as a problem to be addressed rather than avoided.
[edit]: Let me clarify: I am not saying the urban-rural divide is caused specifically by the lack of high-skill immigrant labor. I am saying the urban-rural divide is exacerbated generally by dismissing the concerns of rural communities when making policy. I don't think this policy suggestion in particular is the highest-value one, but I also think that no individual snowflake is responsible for the avalanche.
This is, of course, an intentional behavior of our system of government. You can even make an argument that it's a positive one. (I would disagree.) It is not, however, "democratic", nor does it point at some kind of underrepresentation.
It would be much better if more small towns had similar offerings such that the 10% aren't overrun by people looking to get away from the city.
I am sure that many of these places would be very happy to have less H1Bs living there.
Do you think that an influx of underpaid skilled labor is going to ease the tensions that created Brexit and Trump?
Your assertion here appears to be that Trump voters were pissed off that more immigrants weren't making it to their hometowns. I find that assertion... highly implausible.
> Policy that lets the economic advantage of urban areas snowball more is something that should be given more thought than "it wouldn't matter anyways, those places suck."... Those places do suck, but we should treat that as a problem to be addressed rather than avoided.
Oy.
1. IMO they don't suck. They have many advantages. But they aren't particularly good locations for doing highly skilled labor.
2. There are a lot of policy levers that can be used to help rural areas. Trying to turn them into immigration-fueled discount tech/med hubs is doomed to fail and is therefore definitely not the right lever.
3. It's also worth noting that even rural economic development tends to be geographically concentrated. Just as wealth concentrates in cities with 10M people compared to cities with 100,000 people, wealth also concentrates in cities with 100,000 people compared to cities with 1,000 people. And BTW, those 100,000 person towns where skilled labor would invariably concentrate are in many cases already doing quite well.
Even rural development -- and ESPECIALLY rural development based on skilled labor immigration -- isn't going to help the rural places that have been hardest hit in the past two decades, which tend to be in the 1,000 to 10,000 range.
The argument isn't that policy should benefit urban America. The argument is that trying to bootstrap tiny local economies with skilled labor immigration is doomed to fail.
H1B visas are only granted to people who are paid more than the prevailing wages of citizens working the same SOC code job in the same area. There have been consultancies in the past who have gamed this, but USCIS has cracked down severely on this in the past year or so.
These cities may as well be "coastal" relative to their regions. There are a lot of hurting small PA towns less than 100 miles away from Pittsburgh experiencing a brain drain, for example.
IF KC and Pittsburgh aren't "middle america", then the term ceases to have much of a meaning and we might as well stick with "rural".
There are a lot of smaller metro areas that are far rural, but aren't big cities - for example, my hometown - Erie, PA, which has a metro population of just over 275k - is very much a city - but is too far from Pittsburgh to benefit from their economic growth. Pittsburgh is fine, but Erie is in decline.
If "middle america" refers to every non-rural city between the coasts, then it is a meaningless term. There is too much economic variation to lump them all together for a single analysis.
That leaves nobody to complain.
If you insist on deciding what is best for rural and middle America, I sure hope you don't object when they return the favor, deciding on your behalf that cities would be best off without any immigration.
Salary is a function of location, industry, and demand. Discriminating against American businesses that need skilled labor and are not in the most competitive industries or locations is not the purpose of the H1B program.
>There is no reason Tata and Infosys should be hiring 70k contractors to do shitty jobs.
This is a different problem, which is being solved as USCIS is cracking down on consultants who are registered in one region but work in another.
The point is that switching to an auction with the H1B causes more problems without really solving any, at least within the scope of the program's purpose.
Bringing in a lot of foreign civil engineers may be more total economic value brought in, but in a way that doesn't justify the cost in unassimilated people.
An "auction" by how much employers are willing to pay is indeed much closer to what the policy is trying to optimize for.
The lower-paid high-skill jobs should not be using the scarce H1-B spots, but should raise wages to draw more Americans, since the premium is much lower than you'd need to hire an American for the higher-paid jobs.
The choice is instead between 20 low paid engineers and 20 high paid executives/engineers/employees.
This makes the answer to this choice much more clear.
Again, auctioning H1B with quotas doesn't solve a problem, it just creates new ones.
If you're paying 20x what a civil engineer gets then you might as well go with E5 Investor Visas. Its true that auctions have issues, but we could go with (for example) second price (aka Vickrey) auctions for salaries.
I'm not sure why you are turning to hostilities. Please review the legislation.
Rural and middle America needs to get off its collective ass. I have seriously considered moving to one of those places -- alas, while I can get a house cheap and have what I need to survive inexpensively, I cannot get high speed internet even if I pay $1,000.00 per month.
What jobs are rural American companies hiring H1Bs?
The H1-B system seems designed to allow big companies to exploit foreign labor to drive down wages and hold those foreigners hostage while they're here. Ratios better allow mobility of foreign workers and allow them to seek market rate salaries. If I were in control of immigration policies, I'd set a 3:1 American-to-foreigner ratio based on job classification/salary bands and make it apply to any company with more than 50 employees. Any immigrant who passes a DHS background check and can get an offer from an eligible company should be able to get a work permit, regardless of their home country, with no time limit when they'd be sent home. Only failing to find employment at an eligible employer within, say, 6 months should force someone to leave. And after a 5-year working period, they should be able to apply for citizenship. At worst, it becomes a jobs program that forces employers to employ American citizens to get the workers they need.
The remaining concern is distorted markets like foreign language teachers (brought up elsewhere in the thread), where it may be politically infeasible to raise compensation to match the value workers create.
The purpose is not to give visas to the wealthiest bidder in the wealthiest locations and industries.
Prevailing wage requirement already solves the problem of wage velocity, so this is just creating more issues without solving any.
H1B and similar programs should be used to fill in the holes that are on the national level - i.e. where there's no labor force anywhere else in the country that could be enticed to move.
Having higher paid workers push out the lower paid ones, is kinda the whole point. I want more skilled labor to move to where they are in demand.
If you set a quota and give to the highest bidder, you're going to see private sector executives and financial roles being filled in cities with high costs of living and competitive wages. Salary is a function not only of demand but also location and industry.
This will discriminate against rural and middle America by depriving them of the skilled labor that they need to survive.