The H1B system is supposed to be for shortages. In a real economic shortage, prices are supposed to go up. If salaries are not going up, it is not a real shortage.

I think there is a shortage, so I'm proposing increasing salaries. Accounting firms are not competing with tech firms necessarily, they are competing with the market for accountants (lots of accountants go into other fields because they cant find work at a suitable rate.) Their business model should not be to underpay workers, it should be to pay workers high enough to attract them and charge customers appropriately.

> Accounting firms are not competing with tech firms necessarily, they are competing with the market for accountants

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with this. However if you put ALL H1Bs in a single pool, and they go to the highest bidder across all industries, then yes, accounting firms are competing with tech firms.

> accounting firms are competing with tech firms.

I think GP's point is that that's the way it's supposed to be. The shortage of accountants could be due to some combination of:

1. There are not enough people with the physical / mental / psychological capability to be accountants in the US

2. People with the physical / mental / psychological capability to be accountants are choosing other jobs; perhaps because they pay better, or are more fun, or have better work/life balance, or whatever.

#1 is a reason to steal^W import capable people from other countries; but I doubt very much that's the source of accounting's problems. It's almost certainly #2. In which case, if accounting firms want more accountants, they should make the job more attractive: pay more, have better hours, etc.

Correct, this was exactly my point. The last thing is -- if the Accounting Firm business model doesnt work w/ fair wages, then the firms need to re-think how much they charge ("lets abuse desperate foreign workers" isn't really a good business model.)

Seems like a trivially solved problem by introducing industry-specific segmentation.

Your company has to declare what industry segment they're in when submitting annual returns anyway (here), not sure if it's the same case in the US.

but it does not need to be single pool for auctions to work - each category of work could have their own individual auction.

Entirely possible, but that's not what was suggested.

I think there would also be debate around how the quota is split between categories. I highly suspect that are much few Foreign Law advisors or Psychologists attempting to get H1Bs than there are "IT/Computer Professionals" (and many less positions available for them); giving each category an equal split wouldn't be fair either.

I'm not saying there isn't a way, but it would have issues too.

So what? If there is not enough workers, they'll have to raise wages. What's wrong with healthcare workers getting 80k? (in reality, they'd poach someone elses workers, they'd have to raise their wages, and so on, then slowly there would be more workers due to more people going into field due to high wages, and if not, then get a H1B worker for 80k+).

There's no such thing as "can't fill locally", there's "can't fill locally right now".

The sacrifice to the "right now" bit is immense, it destroys incentive to learn pretty much anything.

When you're trying to hire someone, "right now" is important. If I want to hire a nurse, and there are no nurses available, I can't afford to wait 4 years for someone to train as a nurse to be available for me to hire.

If I just keep offering to pay more, then yes, I will eventually be able to hire a nurse that was previously employed somewhere else, but now _that_ person needs to hire a nurse. No matter how many times you go around this circle, there are not enough nurses for everyone to hire.

That is a shortage. A shortage doesn't typically come with the asterisk of "but if I wait long enough then maybe there won't be".

The higher price makes the economics around that job different. It makes it valuable to utilize the existing individuals' time better, it makes employers give them secondary resources to help them perform their job better/faster, and it will punish employers that don't use their highly-paid time properly and to full efficiency. Also, the requirements for said position would be under pressure to be reduced to increase the available labor pool that can perform that job. Not to mention that it'll act as a price-signal for more people to train in that field.

It's not a binary "oh no not enough people" type of deal. It's a sliding scale and the closer you get to each side, the higher the incentives are to revert to some sort of equilibrium.

It really is quite one-sided (and potentially suspicious) to just try figure out "how can we get more of these people from other countries" instead of looking at all the other locally-available solutions. The same "circle" you speak of will happen regardless, even with plenty of immigration, with the double-whammy being that it'll affect the poorer countries that can't afford to keep those skilled immigrants.

Seems like you assume a finite number of nurses. If the pay keeps going up, then new candidate will appear, not immediately but, pretty soon. Market forces and all that.

This is so true. In fact we've seen this happen already. Once big-tech started paying market salaries, their applicant:position ratio has exploded to 100:1. In a prior era, those same workers might have gone to Wall St or Strategy Consulting.

The Market works. Pay fair wages and your personnel problems go away.

And you just cut services that customers want but aren't willing to pay for. Which will likely happen with a lot of the gig economy as-a-service things currently being subsidized.

Or stay more pedestrian. Grocery baggers in the US basically went away for a while. I assuume they came back based in part on what grocery stores had to pay for them to work.

If you're not willing to pay the service provider a living wage you don't really want the service.

Are you suggesting that the many people using Uber or arguably eat at McDonalds don’t want that service at some level?

I'm not the commenter, but I'd argue that people who want a service but don't want to pay the cost are irrational and perhaps we should not worry about pleasing them?

Suppose I want a new BMW and I want to pay no more than $300 for it. This doesn't mean that we should force BMW workers to work for free -- it means that my expectations are not rational.

Similiar, if I want a 10km Uber ride for $1, which costs less than even gas, the desire is irrational. Why should workers have to work for free to satisfy this consumer's irrational desire?

Same thing for grocery baggers "disappearing" -- of course they disappeared, there was a pandemic. They werent being paid for the risks of bagging groceries.

>Same thing for grocery baggers "disappearing"

I'm talking about in the 80s or so when a lot of things started switching to more self-service. My local supermarkets have baggers today and you're literally not allowed to bag yourself.

I don't see there being anything irrational about not wanting to pay the price for certain services. And I don't expect either individuals or companies to sell me things on terms that aren't attractive to them. But that doesn't mean I don't want those things even if I accept that I can't have them on terms acceptable to both myself and the person providing them.

> I can't afford to wait 4 years for someone to train as a nurse to be available for me to hire

From my comment. Nurses require training. I did not assume a finite number of nurses. If I am sick and need a nurse, I need one _right now_. There not being enough of them is a shortage. It may not be a shortage in the future, but right now, it is.

It looks like you're assuming there's no salary elasticity in the job market, which is probably not accurate. There are always trained nurses that maybe decided to retire early, considered the stress not worth the pay and switched jobs, or something else like that. Higher pay can get them back on deck.

Demand for nurses doesn't change abruptly and before importing people became a fad it was largely followed by supply.

What profession doesn't require training or experience to do well? I wouldn't hire someone who had never built a house before even if I wanted one built right now.

You're right, you would look outside of your country's talent pool to try to find someone qualified to do it for you.

Or are you suggesting that you would wait around and be homeless for 4 years until someone local built up enough training and experience in order to build your house? If you're going to suggest that you would wait and "live somewhere else", I would point out that people who are trying to hire, for example, nurses, often don't have that luxury. If they wait 4 years, they'll be dead.

No one is suggesting that high skill work status are used for people with no training or experience; they explicitly require training and/or experience in order to qualify. If think you're proving my point; if you need to hire someone right now, and there is no one available locally to do it right now, then there is a shortage, and you need to look outside of your local market.

Is my "local market" the entire rest of the United States? Or just my state/county/city? This still doesn't seem like you're describing a real problem.

It doesn't matter. You can define your market as whatever you want.

The point is that if someone you need to hire is not available, you're going to try to find them elsewhere. You're not going to wait 4 (or whatever number of) years for someone to go to school, train, gain experience, and be available for you to hire.

H1B is not going to get you someone quickly either.

This!

And when you reach 80k (or whatever the number was), you'll also be able to get H1B nurses.

Nurses require licensure in the state that they are employed in. To hire a nurse in... say Illinois, you need to have someone licensed as a nurse in Illinois first.

How hard is it to get a licence in Illionois, if you have a licence in some other state already?

Submit an application to take the next state licensing examination.

There are some states that have a compact and getting a multi-state license for those compact states will let you switch practice in multiple states - https://www.ncsbn.org/nurse-licensure-compact.htm

However, Illinois isn't part of that compact so its a new exam for anyone licensed elsewhere.

Aside from all of this... (as related to H1Bs) - nursing isn't a specialized occupation and doesn't qualify for the H1B. A specialist nurse, however, may. https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa/h-1b-nurses/ ... and that is a different license (in addition to) the RN.

While that is true, ignoring the fact that H1B destroys the feedback between shortage and supply is just as bad.

Possible solutions are:

-Require the hirer to contribute to scholarship funding in the area of work

- Limit H1B to 75th percentile in salary terms.

> - Limit H1B to 75th percentile in salary terms.

Do you mean, cap the amount of money a company is allowed to pay someone on an H1B? The entire change of rules here is because companies were not paying market rate. Requiring them to not pay market rate defeats the purpose here entirely.

If you mean require that companies pay _at least_ the 75th percentile, then yes, I believe that is what the action that this entire thread is about is going.

I would also disagree that H1B destroys the feedback loop of jobs being needed. I don't believe the number of H1Bs issued is any where near large enough to disrupt an entire industry.

The latter, only allow H1B for highly paid people.

I can't find anything specific about the new requirements.

We already have a system for that -- taxes. Why would you underpay H1B workers? It seems punitive w/o cause.

1. It is unfair to the workers

2. The H1B Programme is for top talent, for talent you cannot find locally. If anything you should overpay for such valuable talent.

3. High H1B salaries also come back to the country in the form of taxes just like for all workers, which should improve schools.

Schooling is a shared problem for communities and our country, and should be paid for with taxes -- why would you put the burden of that on immigrant workers?

Finally, if despite taxes, we cannot fix our school system, perhaps instead of blaming/punishing immigrants we should be looking at our municipal and state governments.

>Why would you underpay H1B workers?

Employers pay as little as they can. If it's possible to hire someone for minimum wage, you hire for minimum wage.

If it's possible to import and indenture a guy for whom a crowded shared house with an actual bathroom looks like a palace, you'll do that. If you don't, your competitor will.

>why would you put the burden of that on immigrant workers

You don't put it on immigrant workers, you put it on industries whose demand exceeds supply.

Also remember that immigrant workers don't come out of nowhere. You imported 100 nurses, India and Pakistan have 100 nurses less. Vacuuming up the brightest people from everywhere doesn't help global development.

K-12 schooling in America is paid through property taxes, so unless they are living in a area with high property taxes you most likely wont be helping much.

College level school funding (state/federal) has basically dried up in the past few decades with budget cuts. The idea is affordable public college education is not realistic for most people. I believe this is what the commenter is talking about needing more funding.

> K-12 schooling in America is paid through property taxes.

That’s probably not true exclusively anywhere in America, and it's not true predominantly in a number of parts of America.

For instance, in California less than 1/4 comes of K-12 funding comes from local property taxes, and the absolute majority comes from State funds which are derived primarily from state income taxes.

> The combination of state, local, and federal school funding makes it so that the districts attended by poor students are funded 2.5% more than non-poor students. And even within districts, “schools with less advantaged students spend at least as much (and often significantly more).”

...

> Property based funding of schools is not likely to be a very effective target for school reform since our current system does not actually have large differences in the funding of poor students. I think that it is more likely that the dysfunction in the schools is best explained by a lack of continuity and efficiency within the schools that serve poor students. The property tax debate is mostly just an easy but misguided target for explaining the achievement gap. On top of the pure fact that property based taxes have actually still allowed for the progressive funding of schools, we already have examples of states that fund students without a total reliance on local property taxes. Take Michigan. Michigan has a centralized funding source for their students. The state takes an overall tax and then breaks it up evenly across students within the state (there are extra complexities to this that are addressed in this article). Even with these changes in school funding, it does not appear that the reformed funding strategy had any impact on student outcomes. In general, funding is not a good proxy for educational quality.

https://medium.com/@coreykeyser/why-conventional-wisdom-on-e...