> [eliminating the lottery] I imagine that would be politically unpopular.
Why? I'm in the US with a work visa and the idea of having a lottery to decide who is allowed to work in the US is absolutely insane for me. It just does not make sense.
Why? I'm in the US with a work visa and the idea of having a lottery to decide who is allowed to work in the US is absolutely insane for me. It just does not make sense.
There's a lot of angles that people could get mad about:
- The "one percent" angle: The visas would help well-off people like me to earn extremely large amounts of money instead of merely large amounts of money in our home country. Instead of people from India/elsewhere who aren't as well off.
- the fairness angle: Almost all the visas would probably end up going to Silicon Valley, which may seem unfair to other industries and locations.
- lobbying angle: As someone else mentioned, the industries that profit off of cheap H1B workers, as well as industries outside of tech that couldn't pay enough, would lobby and advertise against such a change.
These same arguments all apply to raising the minimum salary, but just to a lesser extent.
I mean, I'd be in favour of sorting by salary, both from a selfish perspective (It would make it easier for me to get a visa) and because I think it would be better for the US in terms of bringing in highly skilled labour that is least likely to be competing with Americans (if you could hire an American, why would you pay a huge amount to win the visa salary sort?). I think there are much better immigration policies, but as far as tweaks to H1B go its solid.
But, I think it would be unpopular both among Democrats and Republicans.