[throwaway29]

Any system that can be gamed, will be gamed once demand is more than supply.

Maybe 10 years ago, the best and the brightest of Indians/Chinese, who studied at the top US schools would have got their H1B in this 20K advanced-degree quota. Not true today.

Though the average Indian/Chinese is poor, there are tens of millions of parents in India/China today who can afford the $50K "investment" for their non-so-bright child. I see this among my affluent relatives and friends in India.

There is an easy way to check this: plotting the applicants of this 20K advanced-degree quota against the US News/other university rankings of their university.

An easy but not perfect way to fix this would be to give the 20K slots to the applicants from the highest ranking universities.