2. Automatic cap-gap extensions will make it easier for international students to stay here after they graduate
3. The new rule would make it easier for immigrant founders to stay here on H-1Bs to grow their companies
4. Beneficiary-first selection would put immigrants in the driver's seat in picking between competing job offers
It would also help level the playing field by making it harder for IT outsourcing companies to game the system and boost their chances of securing visas
5. "Prior deference" will give certainty and predictability when it comes to visa renewals
Lots more to be done, but all of this will help mitigate some of the program's many problems
All in all, this is good stuff that will make the H-1B program more predictable and better suited to entrepreneurship, research, and innovation!
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In the next few days, the Trump administration is going to propose a new regulation changing the H-1B lottery.
The big question I'm watching: will DHS prioritize the highest earners or so-called DOL "Wage Levels"?
Here's why it matters: 🧵
DOL defines "Wage Levels" to correspond to seniority within an occupation.
So under a Wage Level ranking, an experienced acupuncturist making $40k is preferred to an early-career AI scientist making $280k. Lots of H-1Bs would still go to workers making much less than the median American.
Look at how disconnected Wage Levels can be from pay in some real H-1B petitions:
A “Wage Level” ranking would end up helping the outsourcing companies that have taken over the H-1B program.
They bring in more senior people than other companies (higher "Wage Levels"), but for lower-skilled jobs with lower pay.
Been mulling over that new Philippon paper on additive growth. Especially thinking about the far future, it seems to have some massive implications if true:
1. There is no Great Stagnation. There was a “Little Stagnation” that started in the 1970s, but it ended about a decade later
2. The future looks a lot poorer than expected (though still much richer than we are now). Linear tfp growth doesn’t make gdp growth linear, but w/ less than exponential economic growth, the benefits won’t compound as much as we thought. In the very long run, it's an immense gap