Why not just go to an auction system, where the group that is going to give the highest salary gets the visa? You could adjust it for CoL so all H1Bs don't end up in SF and NYC. What would be bad about this system?
I've just posted the same and then saw your post. There are so many benefits of this approach:
* Good companies that actually pay a lot will automatically push out outsourcers that sneak cheap labor under pretense of finding rate talent.
* It automatically solves the problem of lowering salary standards.
* If good companies happen to exhaust the quota this will make them compete for seniors which will automatically start favoring U.S. local fresh grads for junior positions, which is also good. It's always sad to see 10+ years experience people in junior positions because they are willing to lower standards to the ground for a chance to immigrate.
Of course there are a lot of caveats with cost of living and titles and levels and benefit packages, but I'm sure they can be worked out?
* There may be separate auctions for every occupation while occupations themselves rationed proportionally per #of applications (or even micromanaged if the country needs more of a certain skill)
* It can be made illegal to offer less stocks/benefits than to a local, so companies won't cheat there
* It of course should be adjusted for CoL
* Startups can have their offers upscaled if necessary, though I'm not entirely sure it's the right thing to do (what prevents those outsourcers from founding 10000 startups and so abuse the boost?)
Running lotteries as well as trying to indirectly rig them looks so dumb to me. If you have already identified the source of the problem why not target it directly?
I thought this too, until it was pointed out to me that not every H1-B is an engineer.
For example, if you want to bring in someone to teach a rare foreign language at a University, they have a qualifying special skill but they certainly aren’t making the six figure engineer salary.
I don't think you understand. Their wage is high for what they do, but there is not as much demand for a language teacher as there is for an engineer. So even their above average salary is still low compared to an engineer. It's not fair to put them in the same ranking system.
> if you want to bring in someone to teach a rare foreign language at a University
All public universities are non-profit and thus are exempt from the lottery. I get your point, but regardless of the occupation if its a for-profit institution they should pay high salaries to get talent.
The big companies with huge pockets will set up shop in small low CoL places and squeeze out smaller research companies out of talented graduate students in high expertise niche fields like research in EE, AI etc. They will be able to outbid anyone local easily since they're already paying a lot for them in SF/NYC/DC/Seattle/Portland/Austin etc.
Your downsides are noted and possible, but the big picture of building out in other areas isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. The local bidders already have to compete with remote offers and people leaving.
They are research labs that are hiring Masters students and PhDs just out of college, working on cutting edge technologies. Salary alone doesn't mean talent.
That would possible be good for the low cost areas. Right now everybody crowds in high cost areas so if this would cause them to spread out I think this would be good for the country.
With a salary auction system, it looks like startups will be at a disadvantage, as several have said. I wonder if investors should put in more funding to allow each startup to pay a higher salary closer to the market rate of the talent they aim to hire.
Investors or at least the LPs should be able to shoulder much more risks than average startup employees, and they should have a relatively higher preference for equity over cash than employees.
Who picks how many spots to auction off? Is there any rational basis for that number or is it just some kind of random 'out of your ass' political thing?
I’d rather see an auction, not for the salary, but for a tax “right to hire”, to be paid yearly as long as the H1B is here. That tax should go for college tuition for US students studying in the field of the role being filled by this H1B. Potentially that tax should also be sent straight into social security general fund (not for the H1B holder). If those H1Bs aren’t converted to green cards, then the country will never have to pay out any Social Security benefits, continuing the systems liquidity.
Unless we implement a new visa for graduates of American universities we experience brain drain. We would be exporting American educated individuals to other countries rather than making use of them ourselves.
It also doesn't account for the fact that H1B isn't just for engineers. Not all highly skilled professionals get paid salaries commensurate with the IT and CS industries.
So now we also need to split it by job type.
There's a lot of overhead involved in getting this proposal to just be as good as the current system, and even more to make it better. If we do all that, sure. But I'm not sold on the idea that we would.
So these industries have unfilled positions but are unable to charge enough to get the cash flow to pay more and fill these positions? That sounds like these industries perhaps aren't all that vital.
Or perhaps the people that can best fill these positions are foreign nationals and the wages have already been driven higher in competition with the number of them coming in for engineering positions? People have mentioned foreign language expertise as a big need for these where the pay is not commensurate to SV-style companies, and this includes positions in education, non-profits, etc.
Even in for-profit industries, margins are not always high enough and competition is often fierce enough that they cannot afford to raise prices to raise salaries.
There are a lot of important industries where margins are quite slim.
No it’s not. These are skilled positions we’re talking about. Skills that take enormous social and economic contributions to develop. The US economy will always benefit from having more skilled workers.
I am incredibly grateful for having had the opportunity to participate in the American job market right out of college. I imagine shutting the door on qualified promising foreign candidates for jobs isn’t a good strategy, if only because it would completely bar people like me from the amazing opportunities that I have had.
