http://fightthefuture.org/articles/hr-170-will-all-large-com...
Anecdotal, but I work for a small company and this would make it easier for us to find staff.
Right now, huge companies like Cognizant, Tata & Infosys submit a huge amount of H1B applications. The lottery system means that small companies like my own simply cannot get H1B visas.
Something like an auction system would actually benefit us because we pay engineers competitively compared to the best paying large companies and a lot more than most large companies.
What's a software engineer worth? Well I guess, like every other industry, it's the amount that starts getting a lot of interest in your position.
Offer $200K and I bet you'll have a dozen devs from this forum knocking down your door.
We just end up hiring people who already have some form of work authorization instead of sponsoring new H1Bs. The current system for sponsoring new H1Bs is dominated by large companies.
The lottery system means that we do not even attempt to sponsor new H1Bs. An auction system would mean that our small company would probably get approved H1Bs because, as I mentioned, our pay is competitive with the best paying large companies and higher than the majority of large companies.
It is a rather simplistic view of how the labor market works, but some people can't seem to not think this way.
Right now we can't sponsor a foreign new grad who goes to Cambridge and has an IMO gold medal because their H1B has a high probability of not being approved. We'll lose time interviewing and we'll probably lose other candidates while we wait.
If H1Bs were allocated by pay then our H1B would probably get approved because we're really desperate to make those hires.
Instead those visas go to megacorps who are not as desperate as we are. How do I know that they are not as desperate? They pay less.
We are so desperate to make these hires that we are opening an office in a jurisdiction with friendlier immigration laws. This is extremely expensive in terms of direct costs. I also think we lose out on ad-hoc communication by not having everyone in the same office.
The net effect is that the US loses out on a ton of tax revenue. Not only will the employees' personal taxes go to a different country, but taxes on some our profits will also shift to that country as the company will have to make transfer payments for the work done in the overseas office.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13362123
I'm pretty sure the parent was willing to pay more than the $76k that Infosys offers -- an amount that pretty much proves that H1Bs aren't being used to find the "super rare talent" that the program is ostensibly for.
That's why we should go toward a highest-bidder system. No need for the government to try to learn the difference between DB admins and deep learning specialists, and it would ensure that the slots are going to the immigrants creating the most economic value, rather than the ones best at pretending to look real hard for qualified Americans.
Certainly Americans should be concerned with income inequality at home, or at least concerned with decreasing poverty among all Americans.
We have lots of our own people who could benefit from the US favoring its own workforce to its fullest potential before looking outward.
I'll see things your way when other governments care about American workers.
And if immigration numbers are any indication, the US does not suffer from a lack of interest from foreign skilled workers, students or laborers.
They certainly do not. There are an incredible no. of programs that encourage American students to take up the sciences and more specifically, computer science/programming. There are an equal no. of other programs that promote women in engineering, minorities in engineering etc. So academia and industry are most certainly trying.
>The American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act (ACWIA) established what is commonly referred to as the “training fee.” This fee is currently set at a level of $1500 for companies with more than 25 employees; the fee is reduced to $750 for companies with 25 employees or fewer. This payment must accompany most H1B petitions. The amount collected, totaling more than $2.3 billion between fiscal years 2000 and 2011, is used for funding training and scholarships for U.S. workers. The report cites a statistic from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that a portion of these funds has been used for 58,000 college scholarships for U.S. students in the fields of science and math.
https://www.murthy.com/2011/04/08/report-on-3-billion-in-h1b...
Income taxes from an employee hired at Microsoft U.S. office flow to U.S. federal government. If the employee passed the interview rounds, got the offer, but was unable to procure a proper visa, he'll be hired into Microsoft U.K., Microsoft Switzerland, Microsoft Ireland or any other major office which is successful in obtaining such visas.
As larger amount of such jobs concentrate in foreign offices, they spur more local hiring due to the office's ability to handle larger projects, growing importance within the organization, larger budgets, etc.
There are some ancillary benefits to the local governments such as ability to collect local sales and property taxes on a hire residing in Redmond, WA vs a hire residing in Dublin, Ireland.
As far as I know, there are few and far between advanced economies promoting the benefits you speak of in their own counties by favoring American (or other foreigners) workers in their countries. So it seems yours isn't a very well understood proposition by other economies.
Multinational product companies are not really constrained by geographies. Once somebody passes the interview bar and is deemed desirable, a hiring process kicks in to solidify that hire. Sometimes the specific geographic office is critical (small and concentrated team), sometimes they're hiring into generic "software engineer" position, where personal preferences and ease of visa procurement decide the specific office of employment.
International outsourcing companies, however, are very geography-constrained and skills-oriented, as their needs are driven by clients. So if they are looking for someone with 10 years of Oracle RDBMS and specific integration experience with SAP, Siebel and Microsoft Dynamics back-ends in Kansas City, the skills most of the time are very specific and the employment must occur in Kansas City at client headquarters.
> there are few and far between advanced economies promoting the benefits you speak of in their own counties
Ireland and UK have fast-track immigration procedures for technology employees and buy ads in technology magazines claiming they're "open for business". Canada bases their entire immigration system on education, qualifications and employment availability where someone with technology skills and an employment offer is almost guaranteed to gain Canadian residency.
Some other countries do not have revenue dependence on personal income taxes, and thus couldn't care less if employees within their jurisdiction earn large salaries. Others derive majority of the revenues through natural resource exploitation with entire economies based around those industries.