A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

According to the article, 50-60 year olds IT specialist who "install, maintain and manage Edison's computer hardware and software" are making $80-$160k / year ($120k on average).

Those salaries seem to be 2-3x market rate for such work. Even the salaries paid to the new, outsorced people ($65-$70 average (sic)) are on the high side for someone who installs software.

The article claims this is a "loophole" because H1B is supposed to replace "highly skilled, hard to replace workers" ergo those $120k/year are not highly skilled, hard to replace, which begs the question: how come are they all making $100-$190k/year (https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1671...)?

I think a new class of non-employer-dependent work visa for foreign graduates of US colleges and universities would be a great idea, if coupled with H1-B reform.

For example, there should be reform to wage calculations (e.g., forcing companies to use median or average calculations of the wage bands), a hard percentage cap on the number of H1-B employees and contractors a company can employ (in other words, getting rid of "H-1B dependent companies" under 20 CFR 655.736(a)), and tighter evidentiary requirements under 8 USC 1182(G)(i) regarding good-faith efforts to recruit US workers for a position.

Really, though, some of the current legislative brakes should be sufficient to curb some of these abuses. For example, 8 USC 1182(n)(1)(E) seems, prima facie, to be sufficient to deny visas to an H1-B-dependent company which is engaged in displacing US workers -- pretty much the textbook definition of Tata. The fact that it isn't being enforced indicates that there are regulatory problems as well as legislative.

No, please, no. We know where that will lead. The so-called "Masters Cap" exists, that's another 20K H1B visa on top of the 65K quota for those graduating with a Masters degree from an American institution. Who could have guessed that that would lead to a cancer of taught masters degrees?

These degrees are cheap to put on (just define a few advanced undergrad classes as required for the Masters degree) and come at no extra cost for the university (the class needs to be taught anyway). Boof, it's free money and a guaranteed stream of desperate foreigners. These "let-me-stay-in-the-US courses" need to be killed dead, they aren't even education.

Meanwhile any foreigner with an actual degree still gets to jump through extraordinary hoops for the green card.

That's a bit of a leap.

"Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument that people from Detroit shouldn't be allowed to move to San Francisco to take a better job, because they'll steal jobs from and drive down the wages of SF natives? What's the difference?"

Probably the fact that Michigan and California are 2 states within the US and whilst America is protectionist (as are most sovereign nations) against other countries when it comes to labour (with few exceptions like the EU), there are laws that prevent this kind of protectionism between states.

Look at it this way. Indians are much richer than sub-Saharan Africans. But go over there and tell them that they have a moral obligation to allow African immigration. People will laugh at you, if you're lucky.