That may be the intent of the law but it is so badly implemented that it takes 1 year to get a DOL certification that the wages are ok, then 3 months to prepare for a job opening and advertisements, 1 month to interview candidates and then file a PERM application with DOL again which takes another 9 months.
These timeframes are ridiculous. The tech industry changes much faster than the above timeframes. So employers are left with no choice but to "game" the system to retain their employees.
Until the US government figures out how to make the immigration process more efficient, there is no stopping the gaming. People don't live so long, companies don't survive so long. Employees don't stay at the company so long. Then, the only option left for these companies is to hire outside the US.
Like I said, the companies are more likely to open offices and hire in other countries than to keep raising wages in America. By arbitrarily preventing the smartest from coming to America, we are encouraging American companies to go elsewhere.
But why don't they just raise wages? Because that's how American capitalism works. One could argue that American capitalism needs to change but by the time that happens, the smart people have built a competing service in another place. See: Tiktok
I see. I think your previous comment could have been clearer because I don't think you actually said that, and I didn't see anyone else include that avenue as a part of this conversation.
This is a fair point, but I don't see how it ties into incentives to create ghost job postings. (Whereas with the H1B angle, ghost job postings would seemingly allow you to skip the timeframe where you have to say you tried to find someone.)
So it's not something that either the company or employee does wilingly