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Comment by john_w_t_b | Hacker News Reader

The government should auction the H1B visas to the highest bidder. This would encourage high value immigration. They could set a price floor of $100k to discourage low wage employers. They should also set a minimum salary for H1B holders of $100k.

There is already a visa for investors creating jobs so that is covered.

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"There is already a visa for investors creating jobs so that is covered."

This visa (E-2 treaty investor visa) has deficiencies. Firstly, although there is no official minimum investment amount, in practice, as a founder you need to invest at least $50 to $100 thousand to have non-negligible chances of obtaining this visa. This excludes virtually all founders in this community who receive YC funding! Secondly, it requires the investor to own 50%+ of the company, hence it excludes most startups where the equity is roughly evenly distributed between 3 cofounders or more. Thirdly, only citizens of treaty countries can apply to this visa. This excludes about 110 countries in the world (only 80 countries on the list [1]).

[1] http://travel.state.gov/visa/fees/fees_3726.html

Right. Because the only immigrants you want are people willing to pay crazy amounts for a visa.

A solution like this would have kept a good chunk of all the famous immigrant entrepreneurs from ever coming to the US.

That's actually a brilliant way to handle immigration.

Compute how many slots are available, based on national concerns (mostly, how many people can you easily integrate and naturalize per year). Then, auction off the slots to the highest bidder, and have a short-track naturalization process for the winners.

When you auction off the available slots you can be reasonably sure that the auction will benefit the winners (if self-sponsored) or the sponsors (if this is an H1B-style visa). But it may not be in the best interest of the nation as a whole. I note that most every other high-immigration country (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain) has a point system.

As a current H1B holder making below that number, I have one response for you. It starts with the letter "f" and ends with the letter "u."

(I am getting paid at or above the average salary for my profession, by the way. My company hired me because they literally could not find any qualified Americans for the position, either local or willing to move to the area.)

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