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Comment by discardorama | Hacker News Reader

A solution to this wholesale import of cheap labor is to rank all the H-1B applications in order of salary, and take the top N. Presto: problem of low-wage imports solved; companies will now be able to find local talent, since they'll have to pay more, and tech workers will make more money. Win, win, win for all.

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...which would suck for the supply chain expert hired at some company's Kentucky logistics center. And yay for the software engineer in SF?

There could be x visas per state or area, relative to demand for the visa in that area. Then only the top paid workers in that area get them.

Why is a Kentucky logistics center entitled to import cheap labor?

Huh? Because you can live a king's life for $100k family income in Kentucky, while you can barely afford rent in Bay Area with the same salary. Also, manufacturing, logistics, have other reasons for being located where they are.

I'm not saying the logistics center should relocate. I'm saying that it's not especially deserving of government help in the form of a skilled-labor visa if it's not going to pay as much as someone else. After all, cost-of-living differences aren't accounted-for in the tax return the employee files.

Well, except they don't have to live in Kentucky.

That's a strange attitude. Immigration is not some weird form of corporate welfare, where corporations have some right to get employee-immigrants at prices they can afford.

Honestly, I'd like it if the Kentucky logistics company were forced to pay SF wages. It might help drive up wages for skilled workers in Kentucky.

How is it corporate welfare? The objective is a legal framework to allow companies to hire skilled international workers: pharma scientists as much as Ruby-on-rails wizards. It is also corporate welfare if you are indirectly loading the die in high-paying SF/NY jobs.

Break it out by state?

It could be based on federal GS locality pay: $135,750 in SF would be equivalent to $114,350 in KY. There'd be no need for quotas per state.

[1] https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality

You'd think that all H1-B visa will end up in SF and NYC, the two cities with highest wages. The rent is too damn high already in SF and NYC! It's interfering with the job market. A saner job market would have people refuse to move to NYC because they cannot afford a roof over their head.

I have done that. It wasn't NYC or SF, but I once turned down a job primarily because there was a mismatch between salary and cost of living (among other reasons).

> A saner job market would have people refuse to move to NYC because they cannot afford a roof over their head.

People move to SF and NYC because those places are good when you need to find your NEXT job because you got laid off.

Agree. And ban outsourcing companies from India from getting H1-Bs. They actually have a special category for them but they bring so many people in that they spill over into H1-B. The people they bring in are from the bottom-of-the barrel colleges in India (I am from there).

> And ban outsourcing companies from India from getting H1-Bs.

You don't have to; the market will take care of it. They severely underpay their workers, so they'll never be able to compete.

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