<story><title>USCIS Reaches 2014 H-1B Cap</title><url>http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=c91dea8c9eadd310VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&amp;vgnextchannel=68439c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>PeterisP</author><text>A big complaint seen about H1B process is that it&apos;s used to import cheap workers instead of great workers - i.e., not increasing USA quality, but allowing employers to decrease average wages by replacing supposedly expensive locals with cheaper H1Bs.&lt;p&gt;There can be a simple solution - instead of measuring requirements for &quot;highly qualified workers&quot; by forced advertisements where companies try to get no &apos;qualified&apos; people to apply, and having an &quot;adequate&quot; salary with the current principle &quot;average of the same job in US&quot;, which can be manipulated and abused, why not just set simple absolute criteria?&lt;p&gt;Make sure that H1B positions need to have a salary minimum of, say, $100k (or some fixed multiple of USA median salary to be future-proof).  That immediately ensures that (a) H1B&apos;s are used for all professions where high skills are needed, without a need to enumerate them in laws; and (b) H1B&apos;s are used to import skills instead of cheap labor, as for less-skilled jobs it would be cheaper to hire locally.</text></comment>
<story><title>USCIS Reaches 2014 H-1B Cap</title><url>http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=c91dea8c9eadd310VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&amp;vgnextchannel=68439c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tosseraccount</author><text>If there&apos;s such a shortage, then how come wages are stagnant?&lt;p&gt;Norm Matloff ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html&lt;/a&gt; ) points out that &quot;The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto indentured labor.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Cringely points out ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-about-h-1b-visas-could-hurt-us-all/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-...&lt;/a&gt; ) that &quot;H-1B visas are about journeyman techies and nothing else.&quot;&lt;p&gt;The evidence that the wealthy need more guest workers is just not compelling.&lt;p&gt;We need on the job training and good wages.</text></comment>