There must be a better way to prevent the consulting firms from abusing this program
1. No subcontracting. Visa recipients must work directly for the visa sponsor.
2. No layoffs. Any company that does a mass layoff is banned from sponsoring new visas for 5 years.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312908
[1] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati...
BUT... at the end of the day, the solution must be passed by congress. Have we all forgotten about Congress since they stopped doing anything?
When the law specifically dictates stuff like the talent of the person, I’m not convinced you’re correct.
Having actually worked at a Spanish language news outlet before (1 of 4 tv and radio stations in the office I was doing IT help desk work in), I can tell you that every single employee spoke English somewhere on the level of very good to near native fluency. As it turns out, knowing English (or the native language of whatever country you're in) is an incredible value-multiplier for almost every job position imaginable.
As far as language issues at my current job goes, it turns out once you hire a manager that speaks both Hindi and English (or Marathi and English, or Bengali and English, you get the picture) it doesn't matter much if the H1Bs he hires barely speak English because he can just start shouting at them in Hindi if they don't understand (even if several native English speakers are in the meeting too).
Congress would need to declare any official language(s). Moreover, by treaty and law (NALA of 1990) obligations to Native American tribes there must be more languages than merely English.
Second most visa applicants already get tested on their English skill when they apply for Visa, for example, universities require English proficiency for F1 visa using GRE exam
And why do you think you are better than an employer in assessing required English proficiency of an employee
Why would the universities fail them on these exams, when it would mean losing out on that sweet, sweet tuition money?
English test is a requirement for naturalization, which is governed by the same INA, which governs H1B and other visas.
English fluency is certainly not a requirement for fluency in any technical field. Perhaps you mean that they cannot understand _your_ descriptions of technical topics, though
The problem likely lies deeper than just the accents; and by the way, the English requirement (including a verbal test) is already set in place for most of the workers. The regular halfway-decent ones will likely already have TOEFL scores hovering around at minimum the high 100s, and in the non-university hiring pipelines I have seen, the English/ESL tests seem to be common if you are not from an English-speaking country, so if you are seeing people where nobody can understand what they are saying, you need to take a better look at your employer's hiring practices.
Want to bet how many naturally born US citizens in your colleagues can answer the question in a technical interview?
What we actually need is a higher minimum salary for H1B employees. Right now it's something like 50k per year, which is insanely low for a "hard to find expert" it should be more like $300k per year. H1B employees should be some of the best paid employees in a company. Raise that minimum salary and you'll overnight fix almost all complaints with the H1B program. Except for from the business owners who are abusing the system to get cheap labor.
Reminds me of a friend whose job application got rejected by some Govt agency in Canada due to "experience mismatch." Job required "Software Programmer" experience but he was a "Software Engineer" instead.