115k minimum is insane, and too high in most cases outside software engineering in certain geographical areas. There are many many other high-skilled professions that don&#x27;t pay as much. I would go further and argue that current H1B regime already favors IT consulting and services companies more than any other professions. Generic skilled software engineers are pushed into the country in bulk by services companies. A completely hypothetical example: an industrial engineer with specific skills in supply chain working in say, Kentucky wouldn&#x27;t earn 115k till may be 10 years into their career.<p>Heck, sidestepping academic&#x2F;research quotas, 115k would even exclude professors from many top-ranked non-big city universities. Salary will unfortunately bias the H1B in favor of software engineering and high-cost-of-living geographical locations. Skilled professions earning &lt; 115k in H1B include, professors, researchers, postdocs, resident doctors everywhere, engineers and accountants of all types outside big cities, etc. etc.<p>Working in your IT silos, it is easy for you to lose sight of the big picture.<p>Edit: To give you a sense of how dumb the idea is, look up assistant professor salaries at UIUC ECE, arguably one of the top 5 universities in this area in the country (or top 10 in the world, in fact), you&#x27;ll find almost all assistant profs earn &lt; 115k.