Because regions and industries that pay less would be mad, and they’ve got lots of congressmen.

Set the thresholds using a countrywide baseline (1.0 = countrywide median household income) and adjust according to the median household income of the city the job would be located in. Also adjust thresholds based on the profession.

Those same companies then claim position is small town x, but that office magically closes when H1-B arrives.

A better way might be weighing based on the applying company. Give a weight based on the size of the company and another for the type of company. These weights would be assigned based on the top-most owner(s) and not the applying companies themselves.

Also add penalties for larger companies acquiring smaller companies with H1-Bs that were hired within the last X number of years. Not sure what penalties exactly. At least financial to fund the system, but probably to the weighing as well.

That could potentially be solved by having different buckets for different regions and industries? Seems like that'd be a much fairer system than the current lottery one.

Different regions can be easily gamed by opening PO Box offices in all the regions.

Well, then you check tax return of employees -- if they don't actually reside in the same region, the last person who touched the immigration form is getting a date with a rattan stick.

Fair is an odd word here, the system should work for the greatest benefit for Americans.

I think a wage threshold and weighting would be best, but others think a controlled random mixing of labour markets is better for the overall economy.

This exists. Here are the prevailing wage cutoffs for each experience level (calculated by the BLS) they use for "software developers" in SF, for example: https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1...

Regions and industries that pay less don't need more labor, hence the unwillingness to pay for it.

You just answered your own question.

There is a salary threshold, but it is very low, $60k/yr IIRC. It was last updated during the 90s.

A salary ranking scheme would cut most professions out.

Kickbacks, my guy!

Downvoted but im honestly not sure why. If you stack rank visa allocations based on pay, the same pervasive fraud culture will find ways to bid rig, including… “paying your employees high but require they rent their office space, health insurance and IT equipment from you.”

Because the State of West Virginia needs COBOL programmers for $29/hr, so the prime contractor can bill $90.

(Not singling them out, just using for illustration purposes)

Well, not all specialties pay the same so it'd be problematic if some of the worse paying ones had a bunch of unfilled spots while higher ones didn't. There isn't a (financial) incentive to quit your better paying job to work a less paying one.

I think a better solution is just a "tariff" where a company has to pay an additional 50% of the total compensation to the government. Then if you could fill the spot with an american you'd want to because it saves you a ton of money; but if you actually can't find somebody (at your offered price) then you still have the option of offering a visa.

This completely ignores higher order effects, if you can't employ someone to do a task at a wage that makes profit, it creates conditions where capital investment in innovation and labour multiplication makes more sense.

It never makes sense to import someone who has less earning potential than any other candidate; at least not in a long term context (it makes plenty of sense for a current business for their own short term profit).

So pay someone $20 an hour and pay the government $10 an hour.

> instead of a salary ranking/salary threshold

Because in spite of what the law actually says, the entire purpose of the H1B visa program is and always has been a way to get mostly adequate people who'll work cheap.

This is not even close to reality.

The reality is that the cap was set in the early 90s at a time where it far exceeded the need and hasn’t been touched since then.

And domestic needs have increased while Congress refuses to pass any reform and certainly not increase the cap.

A lottery is the only legal way USCIS can act to distribute the number of visas set in the early 90s to the obviously much greater need in the 2020s.

No, this isn't true and never was. The reason is that having a lottery is a set of tradeoffs. You sort of corruption-proof the system by not allowing rich industries to monopolize foreign talent. In exchange, since you can't use salary or terminal degree to distinguish, you kinda have to make sure abuse is tamped down as much as possible.

The H1B program is extremely important in a country which has 1) an aging, shrinking population and 2) generally poor educational outcomes for its citizens compared to developed nation peers.

The very fact that some of the biggest companies in the world are helmed by former H1Bs tells you how helpful of a program it really has been for the US.

From my observation the number of highly qualified H1Bs is a small share of the total number. Most are average or below average that are held captive by Infosys and friends.

Yes that is the kind of abuse that needs to be tamped down. 100%. But the reason for the H1B system was never to let Infosys bring Indians to the US and pay them very low wages. It was to foster a welcoming environment for talented individuals, and it still does that even as it's being abused.

That is a different form of abuse from if only the rich could afford to bid. I think it is overall worse (see my other reply) - but I'll freely admit there may be some abuse I'm not aware of that makes my current alternative worse.

How did you make this observation? There's more than 500 thousand H1B holders, how did you analyze them to end up with this claim?

And how did you analyze them to refute it? That's essentially the point. There are no "skill checks" anywhere in the system. There is no proof that any H1B holders have any skills.

I made this observation by working in different companies and also looking at the statistics which companies apply for H1B. Amazon is far up and then Infosys, Tata and other body shops. Other tech companies are way down the list.

>“There is no doubt,” he says, “that the [H-1B] program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them to get workers at a lower wage, and to that extent, it is a subsidy.” -- Economist Milton Freedman

Of course it's a benefit to employers and of course talented people coming from poorer countries will work for less. That doesn't mean it isn't beneficial to the country as a whole, which, as I said, suffers from an aging, shrinking population with poor educational attainment metrics. Without H1B the CEOs of many tech companies wouldn't be here just to name one important contribution from this program

Well, that's your opinion. The way the law was written, it's pretty clear the intent was that we'd only import labor we could not get at home, and thus it would have no impact on worker wages. I think people forget that laws exist for the benefit of the people as a whole. If it's having any impact on the wages of citizens, that's clearly not in the best interest of the average US citizen.

> The way the law was written, it's pretty clear the intent was that we'd only import labor we could not get at home, and thus it would have no impact on worker wages.

Yes that's why I wrote that the current process is a tradeoff which requires additional measures to prevent abuse from the Infosys type companies.

But you can't expect the richest, highest paying country in the world to be able to fix its talent shortage and companies not try to take advantage of the pay discrepancy.

> If it's having any impact on the wages of citizens, that's clearly not in the best interest of the average US citizen.

Unfortunately this is false. There are industries where the cost of training enough American citizens to be experts enough to earnsignificant sums makes the business infeasible. I worked in an AI lab at a top University in the US. It's 90% foreign graduate students in those programs. The current AI boom couldn't happen here without this visa program, honestly.

US citizens don't benefit from a stagnant economy like many European nations. They benefit from an economy with lots of businesses popping up and a robust economy. And unfortunately, since Americans are not well educated and are shrinking in number, those kind of businesses need to be staffed by the highly educated from abroad. And those people will accept less pay than US citizens would just due to upbringing abroad. No one in the world expects the pay Americans expect.

If the H1B visa exists to undermine the wages of us citizens, congress should amend the law and face the election consequences of their actions, because the current law explicitly does not say that, in fact, the opposite.

I wish the rich monopolize it. You really think some foreign person is key - then bid $1million/year salary to that person. You want some cheap labor, then only bid cheap and risk not getting them.

Of course this is open for abuse so we need to investigate every instance of someone leaving - if we determine you were mistreating the employee then you pay them the full $1 million despite them finding a job elsewhere that might only pay $100k/year. (if they just take that lower paying job because it is interesting you are fine, but if they go for better working conditions it will cost you)

> I wish the rich monopolize it. You really think some foreign person is key - then bid $1million/year salary to that person. You want some cheap labor, then only bid cheap and risk not getting them.

I don't think rich industries should monopolize it, but I definitely think they should be forced to pay more.

My personal favorite solution to the H1-B problem is to keep the quotas but remove the indentured servitude aspect. You really need this person? Sponsor them, then treat them well and pay them enough to want to stay with you. Otherwise, they can just leave and get a job like someone with a green card.

> You really think some foreign person is key - then bid $1million/year salary to that person. You want some cheap labor, then only bid cheap and risk not getting them.

I mean this a foolish solution that will just make industries reliant on certain specialized experts not feasible.

The reality is that the majority of Americans don't even have a college degree and Americans are a shrinking, aging populace. The few left in such a field would command wages so high their output wouldn't make up the difference or make it worth hiring them. Many companies would not be viable in the US if we didn't hire foreigners in high-skilled positions.

Then develop local experts.

Easier said than done when most Americans don't even graduate college. The time cost, monetary cost, and risk of developing experts from the American population would make things like the current AI boom impossible in the US

Because no one involved in the policy making cares about what’s actually best for the people involved. It’s money all the way down.

If the problem is a lack of local talent in the US, then it seems like a reverse auction would be the best way to ensure they aren't just importing cheap indentured servants. And the money brought in from that reverse auction could be used to fund education where there is the most demand.