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An auction is the obvious solution. Submit bids with your application for the fee to be paid yearly to the USA and the highest bidders get the H1-B visas.

There's no need to raise the cap and all the Apples and Googles get all the applicants they want. Today the majority of H1-B visas go to Wipro and Infosys and the like for low paid tech grunts; Apple won't have any trouble outbidding them. And those tech grunt companies aren't doing anything valuable for the USA so it won't be any loss to have them struggle.

In fact, we should be able to drop the cap to a more reasonable 30-40,000 instead of the recent 85,000.

And we should be able to eliminate almost all the paperwork. In the current system, a US government bureaucrat tries to determine if you're qualified when you apply. Applicants hire lawyers to fake, translate, fabricate, apostille, and make up education and work experience that USCIS expects. If applicants are paying cash, we can presume they're qualified and reduce the application paperwork to one page.

With an auction system like that, basically every small business will be out of the picture then.

The more I think about it, the more I like the auction system.

The big companies that need highly skilled employees can afford to pay en masse.

Now if you are a US based small business and you found a dream employee in say Australia. Either this employee is so valuable that you would be willing to shell out something like 50-100k to bring him/her over, or what is more likely you become flexible and let him/her work remotely.

I do not foresee many small businesses who would actually need to bring a foreign employee in for a constant presence in US. Does a barbershop really need to bring a foreign born barber. If it does then that barber would probably qualify as an alien of extraordinary ability...

My views is biased as a European who programs for a medium sized US business and sees no need to visit US more than once every year.

It hurts startups - the small businesses that are specifically designed to grow quickly, in fast-changing markets.

A small business that's small because it's a niche can afford to have a dream employee work remotely. A small business that's small because it's not-yet-large in a fast-changing market will be slowed down dramatically by the timezone differences, and probably lose out to competitors that colocate all their people.

Not necessarily. A small company that generates say $1 million per engineer would be in a better position to outbid an Infosys type shop that might be bigger, but generate a lot less revenue per engineer. And indeed, that's the beauty of the auction: it would ensure that the people getting visas are the ones whose positions will generate the most net value to the economy.

My thoughts exactly - basically a immigration system for the Fortune 500.

Theoretically you could design a tiered system with a separate quota allocated for companies with <10 employees to bid for (or some other easily enforceable definition of start-up or small business).

Why would that be?

Because a Google or Apple or Facebook can bid $100K+ to get someone a visa in this proposed auctioning system. A 10person startup couldn't reasonably.

But that's part of the labour budget. It's like saying that small companies can't compete with big companies for employees, because they can't afford to pay them as much.

If your small company wants to employ someone then you have to be willing to pay as much as a big company will for the same employee. And that goes whether you're just paying salary or paying salary plus visa price.

The only disadvantage I can see to small companies is that a big company could afford to buy visas in bulk at the start of the year and figure out what to do with them later, while a small company wouldn't buy visas until it had a specific employee in mind. So I'd make the auction monthly, not annual.

But that's the thing. Labour budgets ARE smaller at smaller companies. Hence your salary at a startup will most of the time be lower than what you could make at a similar position at a big corp. They make up for it by handing out more equity.

Whereas a large company can make a better case for paying say $100K on a visa for a $200K/year job, this is much harder for a startup paying e.g. $100K+1% equity for said job. If I have only $1MM or so in funding as a startup I am limited to what I can pay and couldn't reasonably waste a year's worth of salary on a visa, whereas a $50,000MM revenue company might have more leeway. No?

"$100K+"

I'm sure that was proposed as ridiculous, but you have to keep in mind that there's only a programming labor shortage in two, maybe three cities on the coasts.

For a national program like this lottery, every non-citizen the .gov lets thru will result in many social program costs not only for the one citizen who won't be employed and at a higher pay rate, plus all the downstream effects of lower salaries and less jobs for citizens leading to lower economic activity leading to lower tax revenue.

A $100K cost per immigrant is below the low side of what it costs .gov to take care of the local citizens.

What I'm claiming is the program is a stereotypical crony capitalist "socialize the losses and privatize the gains" scam. Screwing the program up or limiting it or making it very expensive to participate in is a net economic gain to the country. "Fixing" the program would be a net economic loss to the country. Furthermore the program is literally inhumane, a real wage for a human with real working conditions is X, but as a psuedo-slave psuedo-indentured servant you are less human than a real human so we'll only offer you 50% of X and treat you like dirt because thats highly profitable and helps rich guys get richer at the expense of everyone else. Its disgusting that the program exists on several levels.

Besides Canada has better medical system, better crime stats, arguably better recreational opportunities... I wouldn't necessarily describe being "stuck" in Canada as much of a punishment. Its not exactly like being trapped in Somalia.

> every non-citizen the .gov lets thru will result in many social program costs not only for the one citizen who won't be employed

I don't think F1/H1B visa holders are entitled to ANY social programs. They HAVE to pay medicare/social security, but they cannot avail any of the benefits.

I'm referring to the local STEM workers who operate at a class based disadvantage.

Its fundamentally a zero sum game, actually its a declining sum game for anyone middle class or below. So a guy from Canada or India or whatever gets a job, that means the local who would have gotten it is unemployed, mom and kids on welfare, etc.

Also there's a local utility who advertises for a $60K CCIE as part of their H1B program and aside from the $100K+ local who now has to work at walmart or pull cable or something, there are secondary effects on the local marketplace such that the $60K H1B can't participate in the local economy from retail to home construction quite like the now unemployed formerly $100K local. So that's $40K/yr not going to walmart / real estate developers / whatever. True, every penny of that $40K goes to the execs bonuses, but they might not live in that area (or even in that country) and there is a declining economic effect as fewer people have money (A poor dude with his first $100 bill contributes toward more economic activity (velocity of money, etc) than a rich dude with his millionth $100 bill)

Yeah I suggested it because it seemed like a rather obvious solution. Now not sure if government is just incapable running an auction or there is an obvious flaw in it that I just couldn't see.

They seem to auction off spectrum pretty efficiently.

> An auction is the obvious solution. Submit bids with your application for the fee to be paid yearly to the USA and the highest bidders get the H1-B visas.

Nah. They can bid with salaries rather than fees. Better to just collect the income and payroll taxes while giving the visas to the most valuable guest workers possible.

>there is a cap and one reason is probably because opening the gates wide open will skew the job market in US.

Maybe.

One of the factors evaluated for h1b approval is whether or not the immigrant's salary is higher than the mean wages for U.S. citizens working in the same SOC category in the same area.

"Opening the floodgates" would only serve to skew the average salary upwards for citizens, which is good for skilled labor.

>One of the factors evaluated for h1b approval is whether or not the immigrant's salary is higher than the mean wages for U.S. citizens working in the same SOC category in the same area.

You can make many valid arguments for loosening the American immigration laws; but driving up the average wage because that's what the government mandate assumes that companies are irrational. A profit-maximizing company is only going to hire a H1B if they are cheaper than a US citizen per unit work.

(You could make an argument that increased immigration drives up wages by generally increasing economic activity in the destination country, sure... but that's a rather different argument.)

> A profit-maximizing company is only going to hire a H1B if they are cheaper than a US citizen per unit work.

Not true. What if the company can't find a qualified candidate? Then what they pay will likely be higher than the average worker in that industry. That's how salaries go up.

All right, they are only going to hire a H1B if they are cheaper than an available US citizen per unit work.

And you can't say "there are no US citizens available". Of course there are... for the right price.

Now you've got a question. Is the price excessive because there are too few US citizen workers available in that field? Or are the companies just being cheap and trying to drive down the price of skilled workers? In an environment of heavy lobbying, with very persuasive people trying to make their case, how can the government objectively tell which is going on?

> For the right price

Sure, if you attract them away from their current job. Then what happens to the company that had their employee taken away?

My point is that an immigrant isn't necessarily cheaper. I'm one of those immigrants on an H1B working in the US that isn't cheaper than an equivalent US worker.

>Sure, if you attract them away from their current job. Then what happens to the company that had their employee taken away?

As a hiring manager? that is not my concern. But from a societal perspective, there are a few things the company that is outbid can do.

1. they can raise their own wages.

Note, this does increase the availability of workers through several mechanisms. most obviously, more people will enter the field as wages go up, but that takes a while. More immediately? you have people that have the skills who can also do another job.

For example, my partner does embedded linux development, mostly on arm. But, my partner could also do my job (I'm a SysAdmin) - and usually do it rather better than I am. Right now, the embedded stuff pays about 10% more than the sort of sysadmin gigs I can get, reflecting the required skills. But if there were suddenly more demand for SysAdmins? if you paid enough, I'm sure you could get my partner to take a SysAdmin job.

This is an important part of how Capitalisim allocates labor efficiently. Yeah, I could work as an apprentice motorcycle mechanic. I'm probably pretty good, I mean, for an apprentice. I'm not at journeyman level yet. If being a motorcycle mechanic paid better than being a SysAdmin? I'd probably spend the time and effort to get my motorcycle repair skills up to snuff.

2. they can train.

This increases the pool of workers rather more quickly than increasing wages. This is what I do when I need to hire technical people, and I can't afford market rates. Find people that you think have the attributes to do the job, once they have some help and practice.

From a corporate perspective, both of these things are just a matter of money. And so is going through the work to get a H1B.

>My point is that an immigrant isn't necessarily cheaper. I'm one of those immigrants on an H1B working in the US that isn't cheaper than an equivalent US worker.

Yeah, this hasn't been my experience. My experience is that outside of the contracting houses[1] or teams where you have a bunch of H1B types from the same place - if the same people that hired the Americans hire a single H1B on to a team of Americans, either the H1B is technically better, or he or she is willing to work a lot harder under worse conditions, or he or she is willing to take less money. Otherwise putting up with the paperwork and language barrier is not worth it.

It makes sense that someone working under a H1B would be willing to work harder; My understanding is that if you are fired, you have 15 days to find a new job or leave the country. Regardless of your financial ability, that sounds like a real pain in the ass.

[1]The only rational explanation for the high price and low quality of contracting houses that I can see is that someone is getting pretty huge kickbacks.

That company that lost an employee should have been paying them more. Any company paying below market rates will have problems retaining their best employees.

Only for fungible labor.

Many skilled positions have scarcity, and employers are willing to pay more for an immigrant if their skillset is a better fit and/or can fill the position immediately.

>Only for fungible labor.

Oh come now. All of us are fungible. None of us are irreplaceable (at least not to our employers.)

I don't think you fully understand what fungible means.

Can a janitor do your job? No? Then your labor is not fungible.

Can you do a janitor's job? Yes? Then that's fungible labor.

Most blue collar labor is fungible - meaning that just about any person who is not incapacitated can do it.

>Most blue collar labor is fungible - meaning that just about any person who is not incapacitated can do it.

I think you underestimate the skill and training required for many blue-collar professions.

I probably have apprentice-level skills as a plumber, an electrician and as a mechanic. I know enough to say with some authority that it would take years for me to get to journeyman level. I don't think the average person could be a really good programmer, and I don't think the average person could be a really good master mechanic, either.

I never said anything about the skilled trades, I said janitor. You're just splitting hairs now.

> if you ask those in US they might say for worse.

Rather than ask J Random Dude in the US, you should probably ask someone with a modicum of expertise in the matter, such as an economist, who will tell you that adding people is generally a net positive, rather than a negative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

60% of the largest high tech companies were founded by immigrants or their children: http://pando.com/2013/05/29/mary-meeker-highlights-us-immigr...

I am a Random Dude, and my first assumption is that bringing a highly-skilled, highly-paid person into this country would result in more taxes being paid and more goods and services being purchased.

Right, however this is where the details start to muddy the conclusion.

The fact is the H1-B visa program is completely abused in order to bring in cheaper employees at the expense of the rest of the community. These H1-B employees have little recourse, limited career potential and supress wages. The uncertainty of their immigration status means they don't buy houses, start families, or participate in the community. The benefits economists suggest don't materialize.

Futher, the H1-B program has a negative effect on higher education. The H1-B program allows employers to avoid the H1-B dependent designation if they hire immigrants that possess a masters or higher degree from a US education institution. It is a well known backdoor into the US and drives up the cost of education and pushes the citizens of the US out of the classroom. The employers list a masters degree as a requisite which the citizen doesn't have because they couldn't afford it. Take a look at the UT Dallas enrollment numbers [0]. Nearly 90% of the CS masters students are international, and of the entire engineering school 84% of them are international.

It's a mess and it needs to be fixed.

[0] http://ecs.utdallas.edu/academics/assessment-docs/2013/2013F...

Do you have a source on h1B visa driving down wages?

Because for an employer to sponser an h1b immigrant, they need to be paid more than the prevailing wage for their job in the area, which is a combination of salary, benefits, and other factors.

And how is it ruining higher education? Isn't the point to have a better educated workforce?

If a public school accepts so many international students for their CS Masters program, isn't that a problem with the state school, not the immigration system?

I would say that US citizens have an easier time doing a masters or PhD because they are eligible for many scholarships and fellowships that international students do not qualify for. In addition, good universities usually offer research or teaching assistantships which result in a complete tuition waiver as well as a monthly stipend.

So, US citizens can definitely afford a masters or doctorate - but they are in so much debt from undergrad that they prefer to work than study further.

I agree that H1B's are problematic, but think the solution is more liberty for those people, so that they're in a better bargaining position with the company, rather than lowering the number of people allowed in.

I completely agree. I've been working on a blog post titled something like 'How to argue against the H1-B program and not look like a Xenophobe' and this is precisely one of the points I make.

Among many changes, one of them should basically be a fast track to citizenship for H1-B holders, and not have it be tied to the employer. If they are that smart and that needed we should make it easier for them to stay.

but if you ask those in US they might say for worse.

American here. I definitely wish it was easier for high-skilled people in other countries to obtain documents for working here.

I agree, but I think general American sentiment is against it. "They are taking our jobs"

Well the first thing you could do is to limit H1Bs to American companies (where the HQ is registered and run out of America and where the company is not a subsidiary of an international company). When you look at the distribution of H1Bs, you'll quickly notice that most H1Bs do not go to people working for 'American' companies. Kind of defeats the purpose if you think about it.