The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The
minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most people immigrate when they are young and without kids.
If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth, then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers program, and H-1B workers are skilled. It is not a genius engineer only program.
Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go! exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure). Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals (e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital to being with (e.g. China and India).
If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth, then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers program, and H-1B workers are skilled. It is not a genius engineer only program.
Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go! exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure). Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals (e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital to being with (e.g. China and India).