Great piece. But I'd argue that what's important for an age adjustment is the expected lifetime contribution, not where they compare to the other people of the same age.
Bringing in a 95th percentile 64 year old right before retirement is much worse for America than getting an 90th percentile 30 year old who still has most of their career ahead of them.
I had stopped caring about the $100,000 fee from a policy perspective (legally, it’s an atrocity and I’m surprised by the success the administration has had in court thus far) because the H1B visa is capped regardless, and it did not look as though it would cause the annual inflow to dip below the 85,000 annual cap. I had forgotten about the uncapped H1B categories!
Really enjoying these posts. Keep up the good work!
While I agree with your overall point that wage weighting would be a much better system, I disagree agree that the 100K fee is a step in the wrong direction.
Missing from your analysis seems to be the fact that the 100K fee only applies to applicants from outside the US which means it disproportionately falls on outsourcing companies (which is good!)
I do mention it in the post! But that's outweighted (in my view) by the fee applying to cap exempt petitions of those abroad, thus reducing issuance to zero for those
Fair enough, I should have read more closely! I suppose I was thrown off by the claim “H-1B abusers benefit” under the “problems with the fee” section .
Very hard for me to follow the logic that the outsourcers benefit from the fee. Shouldn’t the argument be more “outsourcers are hurt by the fee, but cap exempt employers are hurt even more”?
The fact that cap exempt employers are hurt is not a relative gain for outsourcers, because outsourcers are competing for lottery slots against cap-subject employers
My thinking is the fee hurts cap exempt but outsourcers will be fine because they can bring all their employees on L-1 visas and then apply for the H-1B without the fee.
Great piece. But I'd argue that what's important for an age adjustment is the expected lifetime contribution, not where they compare to the other people of the same age.
Bringing in a 95th percentile 64 year old right before retirement is much worse for America than getting an 90th percentile 30 year old who still has most of their career ahead of them.
EIG has an age-adjustment proposal that I think gets a much better fiscal impact: https://eig.org/eig-letter-dhs-should-revise-proposed-h-1b-weighted-lottery-to-prioritize-top-talent/
I like that proposal a lot, too. I imagine what I proposed here is a midpoint between fiscal impact ranking and compensation ranking in effect.
I had stopped caring about the $100,000 fee from a policy perspective (legally, it’s an atrocity and I’m surprised by the success the administration has had in court thus far) because the H1B visa is capped regardless, and it did not look as though it would cause the annual inflow to dip below the 85,000 annual cap. I had forgotten about the uncapped H1B categories!
Really enjoying these posts. Keep up the good work!
While I agree with your overall point that wage weighting would be a much better system, I disagree agree that the 100K fee is a step in the wrong direction.
Missing from your analysis seems to be the fact that the 100K fee only applies to applicants from outside the US which means it disproportionately falls on outsourcing companies (which is good!)
I do mention it in the post! But that's outweighted (in my view) by the fee applying to cap exempt petitions of those abroad, thus reducing issuance to zero for those
Fair enough, I should have read more closely! I suppose I was thrown off by the claim “H-1B abusers benefit” under the “problems with the fee” section .
Very hard for me to follow the logic that the outsourcers benefit from the fee. Shouldn’t the argument be more “outsourcers are hurt by the fee, but cap exempt employers are hurt even more”?
The fact that cap exempt employers are hurt is not a relative gain for outsourcers, because outsourcers are competing for lottery slots against cap-subject employers
My thinking is the fee hurts cap exempt but outsourcers will be fine because they can bring all their employees on L-1 visas and then apply for the H-1B without the fee.
https://lukeeure.substack.com/p/trumps-h-1b-lottery-policy-kind-of?r=bx8en&utm_medium=ios