[steevenwee]

Now, If we do set the minimum salary at that level SV will be just fine, but what about non-NYC or SV regions, who also have tech companies (believe it or not) and yet much lower income median. We will be embracing newcomers to only come to the coast, which is hardly Trump's point here.

[bdavisx]

So let's say the minimum is $130k. That means you could hire an American for $90k (or even less depending on experience) and spend $20k training them and still come out ahead. For a lot of jobs that I've seen H1B's doing at the company I work for, you could find someone from the U.S. willing and capable of doing it - they might not be a perfect fit, but $20k worth of on the job training is a lot. I'm talking CRUD apps and basic infrastructure kinds of stuff, and that's what I've seen a lot of H1B's doing.

Now I realize that there are real specialties that you can't train someone for that easily, and if that's the case, then those people should be making a lot of money no matter where they are located.

[true_religion]

That is what the program was designed for. I'm not really a fan of mutating legislature for other purposes.

Lower wage, and high wage workers are different and a VISA program designed for one isn't going to necessarily be fair to another.

Currently, employer influence of H1-Bs is high because they can essentially deport you when you get fired and you lose the life you built in the USA. That's not 'fair', but its at least mitigated if (a) you pay a very high wage and (b) the employees are in high demand globally so sending them out of the USA isn't really a downturn in their lives.

[Bartweiss]

I don't think this really gets to the issue. The median one-bedroom apartment in SF has rent 5x the median for all rentals in Indianapolis. Paying $111,000 in the midwest beats $130,000 in the Valley because you'll come out ahead after housing and taxes.

So the problem is that two-fold: hard salary cutoffs translate poorly between locations, and $130k is enough to price out most parts of the country almost entirely.

Raising the salary cut-off to $130k would basically be urban protectionism: you could hire visa workers for well-paid but unexceptional tasks in NYC, SF, and Boston, but only for exceptional expertise everywhere else.

[steevenwee]

Exactly the point. Let the market set the salary cut offs would be much more logical than just set salary value for the entire country.