This definitely gets at the problem, imo. There would be much less opposition to the H1B program if it were bringing in exclusively employees with, say, $150k+ compensation. It would be hard to argue those employees are undercutting salaries, except perhaps a few of the higher salaries. But there are a lot of $60k salaries on H1Bs, which seems a lot more suspicious. How scarce can a skill be if you're only paying $60k for it?
As far as I can tell, a lot of the misuse comes from the enterprise/consulting space. Companies like Google seem to be mostly using the program as intended, bringing in high-end and highly paid talent. But there's a weird corporate dance going on with "solutions" companies like IBM and Accenture, who subcontract through overseas outsourcing firms (sometimes derogatorily called "body shops"), who in turn use the H1B program to bring over some of their staff to the U.S. office to staff the contract. This use of the program looks more like undercutting wages than bringing in unusual, hard-to-find talent.
My pet solution to the problem is to prioritize quota slots by pay tiers, as a rough proxy for how rare the skills being sought really are. So e.g. any company willing to pay $200k+ salaries to a candidate gets in line first for this year's H1B slots, then $150k+ applications are processed, etc. I suspect companies would oppose this for fear that it would create a bidding war for H1B talent, though, which is the last thing they want.
As far as I can tell, a lot of the misuse comes from the enterprise/consulting space. Companies like Google seem to be mostly using the program as intended, bringing in high-end and highly paid talent. But there's a weird corporate dance going on with "solutions" companies like IBM and Accenture, who subcontract through overseas outsourcing firms (sometimes derogatorily called "body shops"), who in turn use the H1B program to bring over some of their staff to the U.S. office to staff the contract. This use of the program looks more like undercutting wages than bringing in unusual, hard-to-find talent.
My pet solution to the problem is to prioritize quota slots by pay tiers, as a rough proxy for how rare the skills being sought really are. So e.g. any company willing to pay $200k+ salaries to a candidate gets in line first for this year's H1B slots, then $150k+ applications are processed, etc. I suspect companies would oppose this for fear that it would create a bidding war for H1B talent, though, which is the last thing they want.