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Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

Why not, then, work eligibility for everyone with each of the following:

(a) a college degree

(b) a job offer with a salary above the average in their intended metro-area of residence

(d) no record of criminality

Then there's no discrimination by field, and we'd get a bonanza of educated workers from around the world with minimal social/adjustment costs.

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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 ;).

You could get a close enough estimate to implement the program from tax data, or confidential surveys of a small sample of employers, without requiring full public disclosure of all compensation.

nah, lets go whole hog with this one. Data wants to be free ;) Anything less and the system will be gamed.

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

On a political level, I agree, it's a longshot. However, a company that claims it can't find qualified workers at competitive salaries and is asking for a special visa program certainly should be willing to make its salary information public.

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 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.

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

Yup, TN-1 for Canadians.

Doesn't help if you want to start a business in the US, though.

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.

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