I like these ideas.. ultimately you want people that are interested in becoming productive, value-adding members of society, whether that be genius tech founders or hard-working floor moppers. The challenge is finding the right mix of objective qualifications that represent this characteristic.

I especially like the implications of item (b). To achieve this, we would have to have a public db of _all_ salaries!!! It would help normalize things in the same way we normalize real estate sales. Note: I do not believe public real estate sales data has anything to do with the real estate bubble and its collapse. Its possibly the best part of the U.S. real estate market.

But good luck getting congress to force all private and public companies to publish their salary data ;).

These are pretty much the conditions for an E-3 (treaty worker) visa available to Australians. I believe Canadians have something similar, too.

Great proposal but somehow those companies which currently important H1b's for the wage savings they offer just never seem to behind sensible thinking like this. They must not be thinking very far ... beyond their bottom line.

I think this is a great basis for eligibility. It isn't all that different from the "points" test in Australia (or Canada, from what I've heard).

My only difference is that I can't get behind granting residency to "everyone" with these attributes ... lots of people, sure, but I think that for practical reasons, the US can't offer citizenship or residency to everyone who would like it, even good folks who meet your criteria.

But considering that we take about 1.2 million a year into the US, I'd much rather a good system based on the criteria you've proposed than the dysfunctional nightmare we have right now.