[jimbokun]

You could have separate categories for non profit and academic positions.

But for positions in private industry, I don't care. If you really, really need a foreign employee over a domestic one, you will need to pay the H1B premium, competing with everyone else.

It's more fair than a system based on luck, or arbitrary criteria of review board or something guaranteed to be games and manipulated.

[CPLX]

But the goal of the system isn't fairness, it's to provide needed skills to American businesses. It sounds like you're looking at this from the perspective of a job-seeking foreign national, but that's not actually a constituency here, they aren't American, don't vote, and our government is not intending to help them with this program.

The supposed point is to make sure American companies can compete. The idea of only allowing the very highest paid foreign workers in, and them all being software developers, has literally nothing to do with that goal.

[jimbokun]

"The supposed point is to make sure American companies can compete."

I don't really care about this, either. I care more about American people than American companies. Companies, American or otherwise, are doing fine.