For-profit firms are limited in their ability to hire new, foreign-born, highly-educated workers after quotas on H-1B work permits are met each year, though they are able to hire existing H-1B workers. Universities and other non-profit research institutions do not face the same restrictions....

The H-1B program allows highly-educated foreign-born labor to temporarily work in the United States. Quotas restrict the number of labor force entrants, however. In many years, all available work permits were allocated by random lottery. This paper argues that an alternative distribution method...