Should someone expect the salaries of H1-B employees to be comparable to resident employees? This is very interesting data but I'm wondering what all can be inferred from it.
This gets messy because for H1Bs it is difficult to move between jobs, so it is harder for them to get raises, etc, but thats another whole story.
If visa paperwork lives up to its reputation, however, a rational company would only hire foreign workers if they are talented enough to be worth the hassle or have skills that cannot be found elsewhere. Presumably these people would be paid well. These numbers may be higher than the true average.
Surely when that discussion happens the boss is going to say
"yeah the other company is paying higher than the prevailing rate because they needed to satisfy the H1B salary requirement (that it be higher than the average local rate) but needed those foreign workers because of their domain expertise" (or whatever the reason was for hiring them)