A simpler system could just be to have an absolute salary floor rather than fiddling with prevailing wages. For example, a program that allows you to sponsor un

A simpler system could just be to have an absolute salary floor rather than fiddling with prevailing wages. For example, a program that allows you to sponsor unlimited visas as long as you offer $100k+ salaries. That would also allocate more visas to areas where the unfilled jobs have the highest demand, as measured by the willingness of companies to pay significant amounts of money to fill the positions. An area of expertise that a company isn't willing to pay more than $100k to get is pretty much by definition of only limited value to the company— or they'd be willing to pay more in trying to fill it. The prevailing-wage approach somewhat strangely will prefer issuing a visa to a company that's paying $60k in an area with typically $60k salaries, over paying $140k in an area with typically $150k salaries, even though the latter person actually has expertise that is more in demand, measured in absolute terms.