It would complicate some of these "games", but I'm sure they would implement a kickback system where the person would receive a great salary but it had a "side contract" where it would be required to pay most of it to another company, or just straight up fraud..
* Does compliance with the law create the behavior we want or does the law itself incentivize bad behavior?
* Can we reasonably detect a large enough percentage of fraud that the distortion to the system will be minimal?
On the second point, see patio11's The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero [0].
People better qualified than I am should analyze anything before we implement it, but at face value I'd guess that OP's proposal stands a good chance of being much better at both metrics than the current system (which is hardly fraud-free).
[0] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
The main appeal of H1B abuse is cost effectiveness. If you ruin that by forcing competitive salaries (to even get the H1B in the first place), then that ruins the whole point (and companies are going to engage less in it, i.e. only when needed/"intended").
There is also a huge difference between dealing with a consultancy agency that you suspect engages in "creative visa workarounds" and straight up comitting fraud (=> higher risk, possibly even personal, makes for a much stronger incentive).
Yeah but the official purpose of H1B is for companies like to hire highly skilled workers which they can’t find in the US.
Not to hire the cheapest indentured junior devs.
The proposal would actually help the intended H1B usecase, because it removes those "indentured junior devs" from the H1B lottery pool.