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Comment by recursivedoubts | Hacker News Reader

The H-1B program is about wage suppression, not talent. If it was about talent we would just offer the top students & researchers in all countries immediate, strings-free citizenship.

US companies are far more concerned about wage suppression than talent, so the system will not change unless tremendous pressure comes from without.

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Adding some data. Draw your own conclusions about wage suppression

Googles AI search "As of January 2025, the median H-1B salary in the United States was $141,000 per year, or $11,750 per month. The average salary was $167,533 per year, or $13,961 per month."

https://h1bgrader.com/h1b-sponsors/visa-usa-inc-op0lw9gmkl/s...

This is excluding government costs of sponsoring the visa for the employee AND their family.

I am not supporting US companies by any means - they are as greedy as one can get.

Not to be pedantic, but this is exactly the scenario when you want to use the median or mode, not the average. Incomes are power law distributed, so one H1B or non-H1B borderline executive could be throwing off the average non-trivially.

Yes, my comment has the median number, and the link has various percentiles. Averages don't work well in such scenarios.

It is not about wage suppression. It is about obedience. An H-1B visa is the biggest chance for upward mobility people from less wealthy countries will get. Listen to whatever we tell you to do, work however many hours we tell you to work, or get fired and sent back to your own country.

I would argue its about improving labor productivity. What you are saying is American corporations want labor with higher productivity and even willing pay more for more productive labor (by paying immigration costs).

Thats why SWE salaries overall increased and H1Bs are making the same salaries as citizens, because of higher competition leading to higher productivity.

Importing foreign workers (and culling bottom 10% via forcing curve/pip) forces average labor productivity to increase

I'm sure people are very productive when they have a metaphorical gun to the head.

all of that AND wage suppression :)

Maybe with the lottery, because getting another one is subject to luck. But H1Bs are transferable - why wouldn’t companies shut out of the lottery hire away another companies H1Bs ?

The company hiring an H-1B has to plenty of fees, needs authorizations, and then needs to submit a lot of documentation to the Immigration service for processing that can take 3 months and still get denied. Many companies just say they won't transfer H-1Bs rather than deal with the trouble.

How is that different than requesting H1B in the lottery?

I've transferred H1B before, lawyers know what they are doing, if someone already has one it's less risk

It is not about wage-suppression, if it was there wouldn't be rules that stipulate the visa holders are paid market rate for their jobs (enforcement can be improved but the rule is there).

This logic cuts both ways.

Many US companies are concerned about wage suppression, but many are also concerned about talent. And when it comes to software devs, there are definitely H1Bs who outmatch their citizen peers.

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