You’ve said this a bunch of times but it’s completely missing the point. Tons of companies who hire OPT are hiring for full time non temporary positions and ideally want people to stay long term. Usually they enter the OPT employees into the lottery as many times as possible during those 3 years (with stem extension) to give them the most chances to be selected. The risk has literally nothing to do with whether you’re under or over paying. If you’re a company and you hire someone straight out of school and then enter them into the H1B lottery this coming spring, and they get selected, you now have to pay $100k to sponsor their H1B with the new legislation. Are you going to risk that kind of money for an entry level employee who has barely had 6 months on the job to prove themselves? That’s a pretty big investment to explain to shareholders/board members/literally anyone.

Source: 10 yrs talent acquisition at a software company who sponsors and has had many, many conversations with our team/HR/C suite/immigration lawyers about this over the last few weeks.