Wow! Thanks for this link. For those that didn't click through: all the big tech firms combined only took about 5000 of the 85000 H1-B applications in 2014.

Wow! Thanks for this link. For those that didn't click through: all the big tech firms combined only took about 5000 of the 85000 H1-B applications in 2014. Tata/Wipro/Infosys etc. each took more than 3000 a piece (Tata alone did more than all the big tech firms combined). Still it seems like an auction isn't necessary, just a higher fixed fee upon selection. If it was say $10k, that's a pretty big chunk of the $45k to $90k that PayScale reports for software engineers at Tata Consultancy Services.