Rather than doubling the cost a company has to pay for a foreign employee, which inevitably pushes down wages for high-end talent, why not just rank applicants based on how much they’re actually paid?

If an employee is recruited at $250k, they clearly have skills the market values.

If you mean the existing H-1B lottery, see sibling comment linking the Forbes article which says "However, attorneys say attempting to reorder the H-1B lottery from highest to lowest salary by regulation, as the administration has discussed, would be unlikely to survive a legal challenge."

There’s nothing in the constitution preventing legislators from altering H-1B regulations that I know of. What kind of legal challenge are you referring to, exactly?

I don't think it would push down wages for high end talent if you keep the requirements they pay prevailing wages. If anything, it would increase the wages for people.

The point would be that we fill and address the talent problem longer term. AKA if you need to hire foreign workers, you have to invest in developing new talent.

I would say that total comp should be taken into account, but we should take a more strategic approach to addressing workforce gaps rather than just relying on importing talent.