US to hike H1B visas, merit will count for green cards

[davidpdx]

235. But calling people xenophobic because they support jobs for people who are citizens or residents

is the way to try to cut through the argument on H1B visas. That's exactly what some in this thread are doing. The US Government has the right to set the number of visas, but it should not be done if Americans can fill those jobs.

There is an imbalance between the US and other countries in terms of education mostly because of the cost. India and China are churning out engineers by the tens of thousands each year and if they worked in their own country would get paid maybe 1/3rd of what an American would. I highly doubt the people in these countries are amassing huge amounts of debt to go to school.

Most of the people on H1B visas are remitting a large part of their salaries back to their home country, so only a small amount is spent within the United States (yes, they pay taxes and have to spend some money on living expenses, but both would be relatively low percentage of the amount of their salary).

I have no problem with the concept of the visas themselves, but the raising of the limit is what is shocking. If they are going to raise it, then put a cap of 100,000. That would still be almost a 20% increase. Maybe some will disagree that no increase should be made, but I think a very marginal increase would be much better than the huge increase that is being sought.

It seems to me that the corporate lobby has gotten greedy (surprise, surprise) in terms of trying to bring in more people.

So my question is, the next time they come and complain at there are not enough visas are we going to hear the cap has been increased to 400,000?