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Comment by BuckRogers | Hacker News Reader

This is amazing, from the businesses I've worked with, it's about what I expected. What I'm wondering is if these salaries are what those of us who don't need a visa should be expecting? I'm paid in line with these salaries and seems pretty bog standard. As a result, they certainly aren't getting much of a discount.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. If me being paid the same as H1B visa employees is not right, I'll probably get in gear to find another place to work soon. If I am right and these are accurate for native and H1B's, then there's probably at least a 5-10K premium increase for citizens. Maybe more.

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Nope... that's the law. You being paid the same as the H1B is absolutely in alignment with it. The USCIS won't grant an approval if the H1B is paid below market rate...

But there is a trick, they can make a senior employee(who desperately want h1b visa) accept lower pay with a junior title.

Yeah - there's folks who game the system. Have you seen it happen often though? The one thing I've had against the h1b is that its tied to the employer. If they free it from the employer then there will be much less incentive to do something like that.

This is not true at all, there is a well-defined H1-B transfer process that I've used myself. Your new employer petitions USCIS for a transfer (similar to filing a new petition, but cheaper), and you can switch jobs once it's approved.

The problem for people in my position is there is no legally available downtime. If you get fired, or quit so you can search for a new job, you no longer have a right to remain in the US. There is no way to fix this without entirely redefining what the visa is supposed to be for: a particular employer being unable to find local employees to fill a position.

That's what I was leaning towards. If the meaning of the visa changes so that people can move freely the scope for abuse is very limited.

don't you have 30 days to find another job?

The most stressful 30 days of your life, where you have find the new job, pass the interviews, negotiate for H1B, and make sure the new employer files the paperwork.

Doable, but extremely hard and you have to be lucky.

Legally that is a gray area. You are supposed to leave the country if you are unemployed. But USCIS usually ignores it if you file for a visa transfer in less than month from losing your job. (Alternative is that you have to leave US and get a new visa stamped and return)

$5-$10k is about the amount of money employer spends for H1B paperwork processing, so that's about right.

"Cheap H1B temporary workers" is mostly a myth. The system is designed that more or less equal salaries are paid regardless of where the worker comes from, and this is a right thing.

One thing you should remember, is that if Infosys and the like are paying $74K to a person, they are charging about 1.5-2x that from the client.

50-100% markup in corporate consulting is a steal. 200-250% of salary is routinely charged, sometimes much more.

But, of course, salaries are only part of the expenses. Sales and marketing, operations, IT, management, HR — all of it costs money.

I'm definitely aware of that, I produce 6X the value of my salary yearly for my current company. I'm fairly low paid though and need to make my next move.

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