[bduerst]

Not to mention it would drive down wages for American jobs.

This national auction for visas would be an economic disaster, resulting in immigrants being paid much less in areas that have higher a cost-of-living.

Companies could pay immigrants less than the prevailing wage of American citizens, and lay off the citizens. Immigrants would take the jobs too because it has the added value of the visa.

[nitwit005]

> Not to mention it would drive down wages for American jobs.

There are a fixed number of slots in the program. Requiring the highest paid employees take those slots would mean immigrant labor would be costlier.

[bduerst]

No, it just means that you have a set supply and the auction settles at a specific wage.

Say you limit the supply so that only immigrants being paid more than $90/k yr gets approved. Now companies start laying off American citizens getting paid more than that in high-cost-of-living areas because they can hire replacement immigrants for $98/k yr.

If you look at the purpose of the H1B program, it's not to play a numbers game with wages - it's to allow skilled labor to come to the U.S. and contribute to the economy.

40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families, and if you keep lowering H1B quotas to make sure Americans survive the wage auction, you're going to stagnate the economy.

[nitwit005]

You claim it's not a numbers game, but obviously a discussion if immigration quotas and wages is a pure numbers game. Let's not pretend.

We control the supply completely, which means we control the price. We can set any floor, or regional floor we want, and we can keep the existing rules in place if we want as well.

[bduerst]

No, I claim that the purpose of the H1b program isn't to play a numbers games with wages.

The purpose is to allow new skilled labor into the U.S. so that the economy can flourish. The prevailing wage already sets the wage floor to prevent stagnation - scrapping it for a wage auction only creates more problems for American citizens working in skilled labor positions.

[sanxiyn]

Paying immigrants less than the prevailing wage of American citizens with H-1B visa is illegal.

[bduerst]

GP is talking about switching the H1B visa to a wage auction, specifically doing away with prevailing wage. That's what we're talking about.

[sanxiyn]

I would think any such wage auction reform would maintain prevailing wage requirement. I don't see why not.

[bduerst]

Then the wage auction doesn't solve any problem that the prevailing wage requirement already solves, it only creates more issues.

[sanxiyn]

It solves a problem of, say, Google and Infosys competing to get the lottery. With auction, Google gets all of them.

[bduerst]

Or another solution is to do away with the quota that originally caused the lottery problem to begin with, since it's now required that consultancies like Infosys prove the immigrant is working for the customer.

[tomp]

Why wouldn’t that happen now already?