[curun1r]

> I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US

I have. And based on the patterns I saw in hiring, I expect that it's the same across the industry, even when companies aren't trying to underpay immigrants. It's a fascinating perspective when you get involved with hiring at the offer stage and see the negotiations. You can send the exact same offer to an H1-B and a citizen and the counter-offers will be completely different. A citizen will ask for more comp and an H1-B will ask for an EB2 sponsorship. Both are entirely rational decisions the since employment flexibility of a green card is probably worth more to an immigrant than an immediate increase in comp.

> Best reform idea I've heard...

I still think the best idea is to impose ratios like other countries do. Let companies hire as many immigrants as the like so long as they're also employing, in similar positions, the requisite number of Americans as well. If the theory is that highly-skilled immigrants are bringing skills and knowledge that's in short supply here, we should be trying to have them work with Americans as much as possible so that Americans can learn from them. Companies that abuse the current system end up having nearly all-immigrant work forces. Meanwhile, smaller companies without large legal teams can have difficulty getting even a single H1-B hired. Ratios fix both problems and they also help immigrants assimilate faster because there's less chance they end up working with mostly other immigrants.

Your idea of using salary as the deciding factor is great in theory, but in practice we don't allocate capital wisely. We'd end up with a lot of H1-Bs in finance and almost none in science or any of the many lower-paying areas that require education and intelligence.