From the article, H1-B costs an estimated $2,500/person, plus flight and lodging. Let's pretend all 6 people Pentagoet wants to hire are staying in the mentione

From the article, H1-B costs an estimated $2,500/person, plus flight and lodging. Let's pretend all 6 people Pentagoet wants to hire are staying in the mentioned apartment ($1,200/mo). Assuming a 40 hour work week, they could increase the hourly wage by $4+/hr. and spend the same amount of money. That's a ~50% increase from minimum wage. Now I feel for the business in this particular case. They had a process, they followed it, spend their money, and got staff. Now the process has changed, but they've already spent the money. It's a sunk cost. That sucks.