[dragonwriter]

I'd rather just eliminate the H-1B (and some other classes of visa) entirely, and just add a new blanket supernumerary visa that works like this:

(1) There's a fixed initial fee and an annual renewal fee for it,

(2) Anyone who doesn't have any of the features which exclude you from immigration regardless of qualification in other categories can apply,

(3) The visa category is issued without numerical limit to qualified applicants,

(4) The visa is a dual-intent non-immigrant visa (that is, you are not prohibited from applying for an immigrant visa, if you are otherwise qualified for one, while present on it),

(5) The visa does permit you to work without restriction while present on it.

[int_19h]

I think it's not unreasonable to have an auction system in place. You don't want your labor market to be suddenly flooded by foreign workers - this isn't to say that they're bad, but when it's a singular large number in proportion to the existing workforce, it can be very disruptive short-term.

This doesn't necessarily have to come with a hard cap - you can just increase the bar slightly for every new application that is filed, and let the market figure out where the profitability bar is.

[cloudjacker]

eh the VISA BS from Washington keeps our tech salaries high

look at what engineers in Europe - especially Berlin and London - earn solely because of free trade, I wouldn't be in this field if I was over there