I've long wondered why they don't allocate the slots (however many are politically palatable) via some kind of bidding system, e.g. highest-salary-filled-first, instead of the current first-come-first-served system. There is a "prevailing wage" requirement, intended to ensure that H1B is used to bring in workers where there's a shortage, not merely to undercut wages. But that's hard to police. And there is a more market-oriented way of allocating the slots to where genuine shortages exist: look at revealed preferences in the form of how much companies are willing to pay for a worker. If a company is willing to offer $150k to an H1B worker, I'm willing to believe there is actually a shortage of that person's skills. If they're only willing to offer $60k, I'm less convinced this offer is filling a skill that suffers from a major national shortage.
I really like this idea. It is a shame that H1B workers get 60k for a job that I'd take at 85k and the company's justification is that it costs them 25k to process the visa or what not. That cost should not be computed into someone's compensation!
Maybe make H1B applicable only to direct hires no contracting via a third party body shop - also reduce a companys H1B allowance by the number of redundancy's in the previous year
