[tejaswiy]

Needs to be adjusted for cost of living, salary changes over time by profession (Tech salaries are in a bubble rn. which makes 150k reasonable by bay area standards, but they may go significantly up / down in the future) which is complicated enough but there's edge cases like Universities / Non profits etc. that can't pay salaries to compete with the private sector but people work there anyway because of passion.

[yholio]

I disagree, if you can find cheap programmers in Des Moines, Iowa, then by all means expand there, spread the love within the country before going for import labour. As for bubbles, that's the point, there shouldn't be any if labour is available and willing to come in.

[tejaswiy]

Most IT / h1 roles are not based out of the Bay Area [1]. Significant amounts of H1b population goes to doing cookie cutter consulting projects spread across the country and setting a 150k min on the wage means that you won't be able to hire H1s at all in other parts of the country. Obviously this creates a lot of demand for American programmers and personal experience suggests that this will cause a labor shortage.

[1] https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Category.as...

[akhilcacharya]

I think it’ll just be more likely that they’ll hire 5 30k offshore consultants instead of 1 local immigrant.

[zeckalpha]

Or pay people in Des Moines $150k+

[jmknoll]

That doesn’t seem too hard to solve. You just say that an h1-b job needs to be at the 85th percentile, salary-wise, in a basket of similar jobs by location/position.

[tejaswiy]

That's what the regulations say right now - for each title, there's a prevailing wage level that DOL publishes and a H1 has to meet that wage level. It is however a single level across the country so it tends to be a bit on the lower side.

[ojbyrne]

Actually it isn’t. “The prevailing wage rate is defined as the average wage paid to similarly employed workers in a specific occupation in the area of intended employment.“ https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/pwscreens.cfm

[chongli]

people work there anyway because of passion

I don't think that's necessarily the case. A lot of people that work at a university do so because they're an international grad student who has no other way to stay in the country. They're barely scraping by, hoping they can finish and that an advanced degree will land them a job.