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by bduerst 2976 days ago
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.

1 comments

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.

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.