[Zigurd]

It's a complicated thing. If you read the H1B Visa requirements as plain English, they are restrictive enough to prevent the abuse of those visas is a tool for holding down wages. In theory a high fee for each visa is unnecessary because the employer would be paying a high salary to someone absolutely unobtainable domestically.

The meaning of unobtainable by recruiting domestically has been tortured to death by lawyers. I don't know what to do about that. $100 K feels like too much except for a relative handful of engineers on very high value projects. But it does have the simplicity of a direct effect on anyone trying to cheap out by using H1B visas.

If employers hadn't been caught doing anti-poaching deals, I'd have more sympathy for them.