As someone who used to work in contract recruiting, hiring requirements that made absolutely no sense and were fishing for H1-B eligibility were common. I'm still adamant about the idea that an H1 should be paid at least 120% of the average salary for the position at the hiring company. If it's THAT hard to hire an American, then clearly you should need to pay more for such rare expertise.
Trump is at least taking a step in the right direction by changing the H1-B lottery system to favor more highly paid and skilled candidates, but as you say to remove the current rampant abuse it should be made mandatory to pay more than the market rate for the position.
Personally I'd just scrap the H1-B program altogether, and let the free market sort it out. H1-B is almost as bad as simply exporting jobs via outsourcing. Laws should be made to benefit US citizens, not US companies and shareholders.
H1B is worse than exporting jobs via outsourcing. With outsourcing we are only competing with other countries for jobs, but with H1B we get to compete with other countries for housing (in our own towns) too.
With outsourcing it's basically impossible to compete since the country being outsourced to has lower salaries for a reason - because they have a lower cost of living and people can afford to accept lower salaries. If you are a US citizen facing US cost of living (housing, real estate taxes, college costs, healthcare, etc, etc), then how can you compete with someone who can afford to do the job for way less ?!
At least with the H1-B they are paying US taxes and spending at least something in the US economy, but outsourcing is also taking US corporate profits, mostly coming from US consumers, and sending it overseas to benefit a different country!
Trump has said that US companies should be more patriotic in their hiring, but nothing will happen without changes to the law or tax code.
