Are we actually doing that though? I managed H1-B employees at Verizon and honestly it felt like a scam. They weren't the best and brightest despite being awesome people in general, and they were also getting exploited by the company in terms of compensation. The only one benefitting seemed to be Verizon.

would they have preferred not being able to live/work in the US at all?

I would have preferred for a multi-billion dollar company to use the H1-B program as intended and to pay an American wage to someone living and working in America.

I'm just responding to the portion where you said the only one that benefits is amazon. Surely at the very least, the immigrants themselves benefit if the alternative was no ability to work in the US?

What don't you understand about being exploited and underpaid?

"charge a straight up fee, 500k upon approval."

There is already a work visa for that called EB5 even though the requirement is $1M (800K for rural areas) and you will need to hire 10 American workers. Plenty of rich people from other countries are using that already.

If you're trying to get the best and brightest why would you charge 500 thousand dollars?! I don't care what kind of wiz you are, that's prohibitive.

You need to already have means otherwise your out competing the lower end of the tech sector.

I hate that it is time restricted at all. Just make it a green card program with a path to citizenship outright. Brain drain the rest of the world. Instead we are providing work experience to our future competitors.

I worked many years under H1B, but moved out of the USA. Unsure if I'll come back, technically I still have time on my H1b, but man, it's just so stressful to lay roots knowing they're conditional on all sorts of ticking clocks and hoops to jump.

I like working at early stage startups— works pretty well with H1B but it makes the process of getting a green card via work complicated. Some people can deal with all that stress, I just rather not.

If you need to already set up the business that can generate 500k in your home country before coming here, you do the opposite of bringing value and innovation to the US. You have already given most of that to the home country.

I suspect most people that have a business that can generate $500k in their home country probably wouldn't want to move to the USA at all.

Unless their business generates way more than $500k, in which case they'd probably be moving as businessmen, not as skilled workers.

Yes exactly. They would also be advanced in their career and by then probably have roots in their home country that they wouldn't leave.

800k in investment gets you a green card. And you may even make a return on that investment. Why would anyone pay 500k for participating in a pageant ?