A bidding system would inevitably favor businesses with more resources to spend on employment. I'm not sure whether that would end up being a good thing. It's a

A bidding system would inevitably favor businesses with more resources to spend on employment. I'm not sure whether that would end up being a good thing. It's already extremely expensive to hire someone on an H1B visa, despite what myths may have been spread, due to legal and logistical expenses. There is an abuse I have however heard of (sorry no citation): obtaining H1B visas for employees you never intend to bring to the US. This is due to how difficult it is to get work visas to the US, so you end up with an H1B "just in case" you need them to travel. The right to switch jobs is another tricky one. The remit of an H1B is to place a foreign worker in a job role which has been demonstrated to be difficult to fill with a citizen. It does not replace an individual job. You can switch jobs with an H1B so long as the other job is the same job role (very much the same job responsibilities). This seems ok to begin with, but after several years it turns into a shackle because it's difficult for H1B workers, who by their nature are specialists, to switch to another job with the same specialist role. Combine that with the huge amount of time it can take to convert to a green card (5-10 years for some countries), and they're stuck in a job for most of a decade in an era where job hopping is common.