[WildUtah]

Big high tech companies with open positions for stars would benefit most from a bidding system for a fixed number of visas. That way, the companies that really need top people could just pay enough cash to get a visa and be assured of having one available. The whole system could operate much faster, too.

But what's being proposed is a vast expansion in the number if visas available. Most of the new ones will go to the same mediocre outsourcing company drones that fill the current quotas.

It's just an expansion of the current system that rewards blizzards of similar applications from cheap workers with faked credentials. (Or credentials that document some kind of educations and experience without reflecting any talent)

A bidding system would wipe out those drones in favor of American workers. Meanwhile, everyone who needs stars would get them. Of course, bidding hasn't been on the table since the early 1990's. Republicans were inalterably opposed to it then because it would support middle class wages and Democrats oppose it now because they expect a mass of immigrants to eventually vote for them.

[muzz]

It would be interesting if the amounts of the winning bids were made public.

It could raise a non-trivial amount of money. If there are only 65,000 H1B visas (there is talk about doubling it, and with exemptions the actual number is almost double currently)and the average winning bid is $20,000, that would be $1.3 Billion total!