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Comment by solotronics | Hacker News Reader

I always wondered why not make the H1B salary minimum the same as someone exemplary in that field ( H1B salary 1.5x the average for the position ). If someone is truly extraordinary then a company wouldn't mind paying a little extra but it would influence the average price up and not down for the field.

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It already is. H1B visa holders are required to be paid more than the prevailing wage for citizens working the same SOC job classification in the same region.

>prevailing wage

This is a joke as it is currently implemented.

Is there something wrong with OES or SCA? How exactly?

Its gamed in many ways. Here is one example, bodyshops are based out of some small town in michigan and they use local prevailing wage for h1b application but employee is sent out to work at newyork .

The H1B-violator consultancies have been cracked down on by USCIS in the past year. This has become much less of an issue.

Actually, it is tough to operate such body shops: USCIS has hired contractors to do audits/random checks on these consulting companies and their employees. So, outright fraud is very hard these days. That's also another reason why USCIS is going after the employers, who are not typical body shops operating out of some office in Edison, NJ., Kalamazoo, MI., etc.

I wish that was the case, but it is not. You can verify this yourself as H1B salary data are publicly available http://h1bdata.info.

Take a look for example at Wayfair in Boston. Majority of their H1B Developers make around $50k-$70k. This is significantly less than the prevailing wages around Boston, so it is quite clear that they are using H1Bs as cheap labor source.

Wow - Juniper Networks got approved with $63,960 for "Software Engineer" in Sunnyvale just this year while LinkedIn is paying ~$125k for the same title.

That's probably because the website is only showing "base" pay. Juniper does performance packages that go well into six figures, which Linkedin might not do.

In theory performance performance packages can be $0? makes no sense to approve h1b based on performance packages.

Also, LinkedIn does give out performance bonuses.

You can lookup the Juniper bonus packages on OFLC if you want (it's what this website data is, but more info). I just checked for sunnyvale engineers making 68k and their bonuses go up to 250k.

Where is that info? Glassdoor has 61 reports of Software Engineer for Juniper with an average of $16k performance bonus on an average base salary of $123k. New H1B hires at ~$65k would end up with lower than that average wouldn't they?

Thats besides the point. It doesn't matter what the actual bonuses are , point I was trying to make is that it doesn't make sense to approve H1B based on something uncertain like bonuses.

Are you suggesting uscis " can lookup the Juniper bonus packages on OFLC " before approving h1b ?

Why don't you just link the query results?

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Wayfair+Llc&job=Software+En...

Any while we're at it, why don't we pull the prevailing wage data?

http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?area=71654...

Level 1 Software Engineers are paid on average $67k in that area, so by paying them $68k, Wayfair is still paying more than the average wage for U.S. citizens working the same position.

Wayfair is not driving down wages.

interesting. That is close to the salary I was starting with more than 10yrs ago...Either the wages have stagnated around Boston or that number seems low. Glassdoor reports ~$80k which is closer to what my current employer has been hiring at, thats why the Wayfair numbers seems low to me. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/boston-entry-level-softwa...

My guess is your experience is anecdotal and open to bias. Same with glassdoor, since it's self-submitted. The BLS's Occupational Employment Statistic's prevailing wage data is fairly exhaustive.

> If someone is truly extraordinary

That's not the bar for the visa and never has been.

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