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Comment by binlog | Hacker News Reader

The H1B problem could be fixed overnight if the government handed them out by a simple test of ability rather than an idiotic lottery. Having world class researchers and engineers who command million dollar salaries enter the same line as a $60K worker at a slop factory like Infosys or TCS is beyond idiotic. And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups, and US tech needs the top talent from across the world to continue to remain dominant.

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Cap the number, sort by salaries (perhaps by coarse domains of skills and not very narrow . Nurses vs Doctors. But s/w engineers are s/w engineers).

Testing abilities is a gamable proxy. How much a company is willing to spend on the person is the best barometer, if we stay true to the intent of the visa (scarce talent)

I’m not super familiar with the options, but isn’t there O-1 for anyone who’s world class commanding a million dollar salary? The impression I have (mostly from online discussion) is that H-1B is basically only for (comparatively) low skill workers to come work for lower salaries. Are there cases where globally competitive people would come on a H-1B?

I came in on an H1B as an IC3 at Meta. Now, with the skills I gained during my career, I maintain core infrastructure that has a massive benefit to the industry and is critical to tech companies of all sizes (I learned last week that a major auto manufacturer uses my infrastructure as well). Immigration's benefit to society is tail-distributed, which is why it's important to have broad-based immigration (you can't predict who will be at the tails).

The government can’t measure ability

So then why do they hand out visas that require “extraordinary ability”?

The company documents it and files an application. It’s pretty formula and a bit random. I’ve written recommendation letters for colleges to get these. My impression was the person evaluating it knows a bit about the field, they are no where near as informed as we were. AIUI, the pay was a bigger factor.

Spot on. USCIS adjudicators decide if an application has merit. While they are supposed to be financially self sufficient and good at the adjudication process, there is A. pressure from current administration resulting in rejection of application with merit, and B. pressure from the applicant pool to game even O1 or EB2 processes, just like H1B.

The government/USCIS could invest in the adjudication process to make it more robust. But they choose to leverage it for political gains instead. It helps nobody, not US, not US workers and not non-US workers who actually have merit and rather not cheat.

> And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups

Does it though? It seems like it would drive away the $60k worker, and the companies hiring the million dollar worker would pay it without second thought.

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