That seems like a fair way for the free market to address things, no? If you need special carve outs, create a new type of Visa for those special cases.
The immigrants are all going to be paying taxes on their earnings. If you can boost H1B salaries by an average of $20k/yr by doing a price auction, that brings govt revenue and maybe even gives opportunities to balance the budget by creating more H1B slots.
Or... those other parts of the economy increase salaries for skilled labor?
If we can only bring 85,000 people into the country on one type of visa, doesn't it make sense to prioritize those that will bring the most value (tax revenue, in this case)?
And if that's not enough people... raise the limit? And be confident that a raised limit is still keeping a high quality bar on entrants?
Option 1: you give a visa to a quant with 2M/y today’s salary
Option 2: you give a visa to a PhD to work for 150k/year in a small biopharma startup that thinks it has the solution to cancer.
This salary stacked ranking optimizes for today’s worth of work. Not its potential.
exactly wrong. Americans are dissuaded from going into these highly skilled fields because anyone talented enough to do those things realizes they can make much more building SAASes or working on wall street.
the Boeingization of the economy is mbas and bean counter middle management realizing that an H1-B is much cheaper than a citizen and opting to buy that labor, even if it's worse quality. as management, you put an ass into a seat, so job accomplished, here's your accolade.
This is just an argument against allowing the market to set wages, which you could make if you wanted to but it is not a strong one.
"materials science (eg. Cutting edge battery tech), semiconductor fabrication, neuroscience, pharmaceutical research "
This is a beautiful fantasy for H-1B, that is totally disconnected from reality. What is that 1% of the H-1Bs currently? It is mostly IT and software slop jobs.
Here are the top 40 employers, it isn't going to hurt research in the US to cut them to zero.
Amazon.Com Services
Cognizant Technology Solutions
Ernst & Young
Tata Consultancy Services
Microsoft
Infosys
Meta Platforms
Intel
Hcl America
Amazon Web Services
IBM
Jpmorgan Chase
Walmart
Apple
Accenture
Capgemini
Ltimindtree
Deloitte Consulting
Salesforce
Qualcomm
Tesla
Amazon Development Center
Wipro
Fidelity Technology Group
Tech Mahindra
Compunnel Software Group
Deloitte Touche
Mphasis
Nvidia
Adobe
Bytedance
Goldman, Sachs
Cisco
Pricewaterhousecoopers Advisory Services
Paypal
Ebay
Servicenow
Visa USA
For non-slop jobs, give them a green card and fast track to citizenship. For an IT consultant, no thanks.
What do you mean “fair”? What happens in the years/decades between when this hypothetical system is enacted and when the US can train up sufficient workers to substitute the labor force we currently have with H1-B?
Your proposal will mean 99% of all of the H1-B allocation will go to hedge fund quants and 1% maybe go to an AI researcher, but all of the materials science (eg. Cutting edge battery tech), semiconductor fabrication, neuroscience, pharmaceutical research etc will have to go without the skilled workers they currently get from visas. This is a recipe for the Boeingization of the US economy.