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skills are not found in a vacuum but a market which has a price point. when someone says Americans lacking skills they usually mean at prevailing market prices. which always operate in the direction of reducing cost. so yes providing services at a certain price point is a skill. businesses do it by increasing efficiency, people do it by cutting discretionary income.

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Nope. The visa does not count cost as being a factor. If the only person in America that you can find costs $1MM a year, then you are supposed to hire that person, instead of seeking H1-Bs. If you can't afford them, then you clearly did not need them that badly in the first place.

That doesn't really hold up. Once we are well clear of the minimum wage, there is room to have an inversion where there are 1000 positions to fill and 500 qualified candidates who could auction-price themselves above the profit they generate.

If the cost of employing someone is above the profit they generate, then you don't hire them. US corporations don't have a legal right to purchase labor at a price that makes their businesses viable. If they can't make money employing people in the business they're in, then they need to rethink the structure of that business or their investors need to put their capital elsewhere.

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