re: H-1B Visa Bill Introduced In US, Minimum Pay More Than Doubled

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My understanding was that the current H1B laws required employees to pay the "prevailing wage" for the position that the foreign worker would fill, which sounded fair to me

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No sweat. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about this, especially from folks who aren't in the tech field.

When the "prevailing wage" for these jobs surpassed $60K (probably 25 years ago), they started developing foreign talent instead of domestic talent. It has gotten especially out of hand the past 10-15 years.

If we are going to encourage the next generation to go into STEM fields, we have to fix this H-1B problem. It was originally designed to attract the best and brightest from other parts of the world to America's most innovative companies. Now it's just being abused by greedy companies that either develop this low cost talent for their own workforce or contract out to companies that do.

Many of the H-1B visa employees can lose their sponsorship if they lose their job, meaning they often can't switch or negotiate for a higher wage without returning home and re-applying.

A $130,000 minimum would help develop talent that are either American citizens or green card holders, as companies would rather hire and train someone from Arkansas and Mississippi for $100,000 than a foreign worker for $130,000. Ideally they would index it to inflation. Of course the high skilled foreign worker earning $185,000 at Google or Tesla has nothing to worry about. They are still helping American companies innovate.