I'm a prospective H1B applicant also without a US master's degree, and I think, while this does hurt people in our situation, the argument that the H1B must pre

I'm a prospective H1B applicant also without a US master's degree, and I think, while this does hurt people in our situation, the argument that the H1B must preferentially select talented people is flawed. The O1 visa category (for so-called aliens of extraordinary ability) is reserved for that purpose already, and is more stringent in terms of criteria. The H1B is a general-purpose skilled labour visa. It's designed to meet the needs of US companies who need to bring in specialized labour that the American labour pool cannot staff - not talented, but specialized. A master's degree at the least (and I don't recall the process needing it to be a master's degree from the States, though I could be misremembering and this would undo my point) is a good proxy for specialization. Outside of conforming to visa intent better, I think this change makes sense given the current caps on H1B issuance. If you're going to cap total H1Bs issued in an year to 85,000, why not favour the degree class that correlates better with talent (even if it's not a perfect predictor as has been pointed out)? I also doubt that this will affect that many people - raising the limit from 20,000 reserved entries for master's students (currenr case) to 25,000 means 5,000 fewer people without a master's get their H1Bs. In any given year, the chances of getting an H1B are 33% anyway (applications dwarf yearly caps by a factor of 3). It's a barely noticeable blip in what's already a painful immigration process. I would certainly like the US to have a progressive immigration policy. But I expect immigration policies to serve US interests, and this change does.