To make it more concrete, it would be nice if NGOs could hire foreign talent just as effectively as Google can.
"Universities and related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations and government research organizations are exempt from the cap"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/h1b-visa-lottery-auction-tech-w...
An auction would be good for everyone aside from companies that are abusing the system to get cheap labor that's basically trapped in the US.
H-1B is a non-immigrant (but dual intent) visa capped annually at less than 1/10 the level of the cap on immigrant visas, it has very little to do with “how much immigration we want”.
If we switched H-1B to a salary auction system I would additionally love if it came with a streamlined 2-year path to a green card, because if they won the salary auction and stayed on for two years we’d know these are truly the most valuable workers on the planet and we’d benefit from them joining our workforce permanently.
That said, I understand a complicated change like that would be a major uphill battle and not directly related to our subtopic.
We have high import taxes to protect our national beef production, but we don't produce enough beef locally to satisfy demand. So near the end of the year the government determines how much we need to import to satisfy demand, create quotas for that amount and auctions off the quotas.
Seems to work well enough AFAIK.