4 ms·

Personally I always felt H1B visas should be awarded on a monthly auction. Decide how much immigration we want, then let whichever companies will pay the highes

Personally I always felt H1B visas should be awarded on a monthly auction. Decide how much immigration we want, then let whichever companies will pay the highest salaries get the slots. This guarantees that we get the most valuable immigrants and makes it a lot harder to drive down local wages because low salary bids won’t win visa slot auctions.

samvher 3y ago
Interesting idea. I'd argue that while salary correlates with value, it's not the same though. It seems most likely to me that this mechanism would just reserve the privilege of employing immigrants to a few high income sectors, rather than filter the most skilled immigrants evenly across sectors. To make it more concrete, it would be nice if NGOs could hire foreign talent just as effectively as Google can.
- reaperman 3y ago
  I'm split on this. In the case where they need someone who has specific local knowledge and connections in the foreign locale they're serving, it makes sense. But I fear this would still be used to hire full-stack devs at non-profits for $65,000/year.
- ftyers 3y ago
  I don't think NGOs can currently sponsor H1Bs... But maybe I'm wrong...
  - slt2021 3y ago
    not every NGOs, only universities and associated non-profities can sponsor any H-1B without going through the lottery "Universities and related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations and government research organizations are exempt from the cap"
light_hue_1 3y ago
Economists have been suggesting that the US should move to an H1B auction for decades. https://www.wsj.com/articles/h1b-visa-lottery-auction-tech-workers-d6c92cec https://www.wsj.com/articles/h1b-visa-lottery-auction-tech-w... An auction would be good for everyone aside from companies that are abusing the system to get cheap labor that's basically trapped in the US.
- slt2021 3y ago
  how about nurses and all other specialized professions that are not IT?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - acchow 3y ago
    Wages for those will rise accordingly, benefitting local nurses (but raising costs for nursing)
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    You could have auctions per profession.
    - ianferrel 3y ago
      You could, but the whole point of the auctions is to allocate the visas economically efficiently, which this would undo.
      - amadeuspagel 3y ago
        No it would not undo it, it would allocate the visas economically efficient within professions, while also allowing the government to prioritize some professions based on concerns other then economic efficiency.
esotericimpl 3y ago
I like this idea, i always thought a salary floor of 150k-200k was a good idea, but the auction seems even better.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Personally I always felt H1B visas should be awarded on a monthly auction. Decide how much immigration we want, then let whichever companies will pay the highest salaries get the slots. H-1B is a non-immigrant (but dual intent) visa capped annually at less than 1/10 the level of the cap on immigrant visas, it has very little to do with “how much immigration we want”.
- runnerup 3y ago
  Thank you for the clarification. I think it’s super important that these facts are presented accurately and I love the correction. If we switched H-1B to a salary auction system I would additionally love if it came with a streamlined 2-year path to a green card, because if they won the salary auction and stayed on for two years we’d know these are truly the most valuable workers on the planet and we’d benefit from them joining our workforce permanently. That said, I understand a complicated change like that would be a major uphill battle and not directly related to our subtopic.
magicalhippo 3y ago
Here in Norway we do something similar but for import quotas. We have high import taxes to protect our national beef production, but we don't produce enough beef locally to satisfy demand. So near the end of the year the government determines how much we need to import to satisfy demand, create quotas for that amount and auctions off the quotas. Seems to work well enough AFAIK.

samvher 3y ago

Interesting idea. I'd argue that while salary correlates with value, it's not the same though. It seems most likely to me that this mechanism would just reserve the privilege of employing immigrants to a few high income sectors, rather than filter the most skilled immigrants evenly across sectors. To make it more concrete, it would be nice if NGOs could hire foreign talent just as effectively as Google can.

reaperman 3y ago
I'm split on this. In the case where they need someone who has specific local knowledge and connections in the foreign locale they're serving, it makes sense. But I fear this would still be used to hire full-stack devs at non-profits for $65,000/year.
ftyers 3y ago
I don't think NGOs can currently sponsor H1Bs... But maybe I'm wrong...
- slt2021 3y ago
  not every NGOs, only universities and associated non-profities can sponsor any H-1B without going through the lottery "Universities and related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations and government research organizations are exempt from the cap"

light_hue_1 3y ago

Economists have been suggesting that the US should move to an H1B auction for decades. https://www.wsj.com/articles/h1b-visa-lottery-auction-tech-workers-d6c92cec https://www.wsj.com/articles/h1b-visa-lottery-auction-tech-w... An auction would be good for everyone aside from companies that are abusing the system to get cheap labor that's basically trapped in the US.

slt2021 3y ago
how about nurses and all other specialized professions that are not IT?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- acchow 3y ago
  Wages for those will rise accordingly, benefitting local nurses (but raising costs for nursing)
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  You could have auctions per profession.
  - ianferrel 3y ago
    You could, but the whole point of the auctions is to allocate the visas economically efficiently, which this would undo.
    - amadeuspagel 3y ago
      No it would not undo it, it would allocate the visas economically efficient within professions, while also allowing the government to prioritize some professions based on concerns other then economic efficiency.

esotericimpl 3y ago

I like this idea, i always thought a salary floor of 150k-200k was a good idea, but the auction seems even better.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> Personally I always felt H1B visas should be awarded on a monthly auction. Decide how much immigration we want, then let whichever companies will pay the highest salaries get the slots. H-1B is a non-immigrant (but dual intent) visa capped annually at less than 1/10 the level of the cap on immigrant visas, it has very little to do with “how much immigration we want”.

runnerup 3y ago
Thank you for the clarification. I think it’s super important that these facts are presented accurately and I love the correction. If we switched H-1B to a salary auction system I would additionally love if it came with a streamlined 2-year path to a green card, because if they won the salary auction and stayed on for two years we’d know these are truly the most valuable workers on the planet and we’d benefit from them joining our workforce permanently. That said, I understand a complicated change like that would be a major uphill battle and not directly related to our subtopic.

magicalhippo 3y ago

Here in Norway we do something similar but for import quotas. We have high import taxes to protect our national beef production, but we don't produce enough beef locally to satisfy demand. So near the end of the year the government determines how much we need to import to satisfy demand, create quotas for that amount and auctions off the quotas. Seems to work well enough AFAIK.