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Like so many systems dreamt up by congress, the H1B mechanics were poorly designed from the start. A lottery? That's incredibly stupid. The DV lottery is one thing, kind of dystopian but one can see the 'logic' (in the progressive mindset) of allowing random people in poor countries to gamble on a kind of Ellis Island vision of making it in America.
But the H1B system requires certainty. A simple fix would just be to cut the total number by 60-80%, then turn it into a bid system. Each visa is auctioned off to the highest bidder. This would have two effects. Firstly it would provide companies with some certainty, because prices would be pretty stable, with some fluctuations depending on the strength of the economy/employment market. Secondly, it would immediately cut out Infosys/Tata/Cognizant etc because the "apply for literally every engineer we have in India, then send over the ones who win the lottery" tactic would no longer work and the new bidding price would be unaffordable for anyone who wasn't generating substantial economic value.
Another issue is the abuse of the O-1 system, which has risen from like 10,000 to 40,000 visas a year (inc dependants). There's no way there are that many exceptional people moving to the US each year. This is a visa designed for Hollywood stars and Harvard academics that is again being exploited by the tech sector.
Extraordinary, not just exceptional. Just having a PhD from a top UK university counts as exceptional under US immigration law (and probably should). Exceptional ability doesn't help much with the first visa (it makes you eligible for certain discretionary waivers), but when you are applying for one your green card comes out of a different quota pool which doesn't normally have a lag.
Extraordinary ability means meeting three out of eight criteria, one of which is "high salary" and some of the others of which are gameable. But the intent was "one of the top 100 or so people in your subfield in the world".
Interesting, I always thought the criteria for O-1 were much stricter. As things stand I'm probably eligible for the visa which is good to know...
You know, that would have made an unironic christmas gift for yourself to start on yesterday.
'This year, my gift to myself was starting my path to becoming a bloody Yank.'
Good point, although I'm quite happy here in the UK close to family working in one of the very few industries where the pay differential between the UK and the US isn't all that big. NYC is also a lot more expensive than London to live in from what I hear the people visiting us from the US say.
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