They are indeed arbitrary. Moreover, there is no ranking of the applications; Apart from requiring they meet the minimum requirements they are just processed in the order received.
Since the minimum requirement for an H1B is just a bachelor's degree, it seems hard to motivate that all those are essential. It seems the process could be improved by either ranking the applications by merit or instead of a quota establishing a higher minimum standard such that those accepted are really outstanding. Another alternative would be to simply uncap the category for those with US advanced degrees -- that cap truly makes no sense. (I should disclose that I'm biased here -- I was denied an H1B last year because of the quota.)
That said, none of that would help the person in the article. The simple change of letting H1B dependents work would fix that.
Canadian immigration does do ranking in a fairly efficient way: applicants must support documentation on a wide array of subjects, such as educational background, linguistic capability, etc. This is backed up by verification during the (later) interview process.
The idea is that each applicant is scored based on things such as English/French fluency (bonus points for both), educational background, field of expertise, etc.
You don't need to carefully pore over every case to do some reasonable level of ranking.
Since the minimum requirement for an H1B is just a bachelor's degree, it seems hard to motivate that all those are essential. It seems the process could be improved by either ranking the applications by merit or instead of a quota establishing a higher minimum standard such that those accepted are really outstanding. Another alternative would be to simply uncap the category for those with US advanced degrees -- that cap truly makes no sense. (I should disclose that I'm biased here -- I was denied an H1B last year because of the quota.)
That said, none of that would help the person in the article. The simple change of letting H1B dependents work would fix that.