"these people" are our peers and coworkers. They have families, friends, houses and possessions. Booting them out of the US with little to no warning is just plain cruel.
Biden hugged Modi less than a week ago. There are gay hangouts in Bangalore. Nearly every major company tech company has office in India. Saying that people need to claim asylum from India is insulting.
There are an additional 65,000 H1B visas available each year to applicants with bachelor's degrees in STEM, and an additional 20,000 degrees available for those with masters degrees in STEM. So those +85,000 individuals wouldn't even cover one third of the currently open positions (and notably, more positions are opening every day right now, where the cap is only renewed annually).
[0] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-...
For example - I'd be in favor of abolishing the current H1-B lottery in favor of taking in the first 85,000* applicants with the highest paying job offers. Maybe have some carve-outs based on sector, weighted by demand, so eg academics aren't competing with SV-tech salaries. Not a perfect solution, but solves a lot of the major problems we have today.
*I also think we should increase the cap
I have two tech jobs available, but can not hire H1B, and even if I could, it wouldn’t know how.
Shouldn’t we consider how many of the tech jobs available that H1B holders could fill?
There's a better reason for not kicking talented and rare skills out of a country: you're losing expensive talent.
Given the current income percentiles in the US (https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percen...). The current H1B min-salary is $60k, which is below the median household wage in the US.
The min-salary should instead be pegged to the p90, which is currently at $130k.
That way foreign workers (which includes myself and many friends) should absolutely be held to the highest standard and be the best and the brightest and pushing the bar higher for 90% of US citizens.
Why is household even relevant here?
Its above the annualized amount of the median full-time weekly pay.
FWIW, I disagree with this one point. I know a lot of partners of H1Bs and there is a large psychological toll to not being allowed to "contribute to society" if you are able and wanting to. There is also a large psychological toll to moving to a new country, a lot of America's adult friendships are created in the workplace. Finally there is a large psychological toll to not having independence in making some side money to be able to spend it the way you want (even if the money earner "gifts" that freedom - because why wouldn't they - there can be a guilt associated with using the money).
Therefore, I do think its overall worthwhile for partners of H1Bs to be allowed to work if they so choose.
That said, I do feel like the minimum household salary for getting an H1B should be high enough to compensate for potentially both people working in the US, in a way that helps uplift wages for US citizens. That might mean using p91 or p95, I'm not qualified to pick the exact value, but I do think the general strategy would be best for "the best and brightest" immigrant families(or individuals) and for citizens.
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=san+francisco&y...
Low income in some areas of San Fransisco is roughly ~$95k a year for a family of 4. Minimum wage for the area $37k a year. Some of these H1B jobs are roughly 2x to 3x Minimum wage (in jobs that require 40-70 hours per week). These are not pay levels for in demand with no local availability of employee jobs, these are people taking poverty level jobs.
BTW the real competition here for American tech workers is not the h1b worker who will take any job - it's the LATAM / Eastern European worker with 15 yrs of experience available for $100k, no payroll tax, no benefits.
The competition is the Eastern European+Asian+Israeli developer with 15 yrs of experience available for $100k.
Because those are the terms of their visas.
The compensation crash might be averted by giving h1bs better rights in the form of a longer time to find a new job - then they could negotiate their salaries the same as you do.