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?
* 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?
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.
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.
I am confused as to why you think this is a bad thing. I think it would be an amazing development that would only help engineers to get paid more.
If these nich fields aren't able to afford to pay engineers the market salary, then I say screw them. They deserve the negative consequences.
Nothing would make me happier than for employers who are underpaying people, to be punished.
Instead, I am arguing that these theoretical research labs do not deserve to have any talent if they do not pay that talent market salary.
I want these research labs to get screwed. I hope that they fail. Because they deserve it.
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.
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-numbe...
But these are unfortunately political decisions in our society.
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.
Some industries don't have the cash flow and ability to pay significantly higher like we have the luxury of in tech.
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.