From a cursory glance with my limited knowledge, that sounds like a very naive approach and one which will not pass a vote. The problem is that of lower skille

From a cursory glance with my limited knowledge, that sounds like a very naive approach and one which will not pass a vote. The problem is that of lower skilled (not low skilled) but cheaper labour from the body shop consultancies mixed with higher skilled ones in the same H1B pool. As someone somewhere suggested, instead of a lottery, an auction of the seats would in a sense lead to lesser pay difference between the native and outsourced worker. This is just theory that needs to be given a deep though. The bottomline is that the H1B serves as a competitive advantage to the US. Software, now that it is eating the world, is a very important part of the economy... and the US needs to invest in giving it's corporation whatever advantages it can w.r.t technology. The consequence of stopping the H1B altogether would be a shortage of technical workers, leading to the rise in software expenses for companies and maybe resulting in the US & US corporation to lose their technical advantage & leading positions globally.