Thread: H-1B employees earn less than US counterparts

http://computerworld.co.nz

H-1B employees earn less than US counterparts
By Patrick Thibodeau, Washington | Monday, 13 February, 2006

IT workers admitted to the US under the H1-B visa scheme earn on average US$13,000 ($NZ19,200) less than their American counterparts, according to a study of US Department of Labour records released by the Centre for Immigration Studies, an independent research organisation in the US.

H-1B workers — who can work in the US without citizenship in industries where there are skills shorages, such as IT — are paid less, even though the law requires that they receive prevailing wages, according to the study.

The study was conducted by John Miano, a former chairman of the Programmers Guild, a group that has been critical of the H-1B programme.

Miano’s report compares wage data that employers file with the Labour Department against wage data collected by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. While employers must declare on a form called the Labour Condition Appliction that they will pay prevailing wages, Miano says in the report that agency officials haven’t been required to verify that data.

Meanwhile, employers can use their own salary surveys for entry-level workers to justify paying lower wages, “rather than more relevant and objective data sources, to make prevailing wage claims when hiring H-1B workers,â€

Ahem, Mr. Thibodeau, you forgot to mention something important. You forgot to mention that a significant percentage of the H-1Bs are indentured! You also forgot to mention that indentured servitude is illegal in the US. It might be legal in India, but it's definately illegal here.

Ya know, something is really strange when ordinary readers know the facts better than high powered intellectual scholars.

Coto