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Comment by fredfoobar | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, there's plenty of abuse with H1B with those consulting companies operating out of India and shipping people overseas, I don't believe many of them would qualify for the H1B. That said, many folks who come here to study and get hired by companies (usually, for their specialization in a masters degree for most foreign students) also apply for a H1B.

I don't understand your "low wage" argument though, aren't there laws against it currently? they need to be paid at least the prevailing wage in their location/job level.

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From https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...

Quote

     The statute creating the H-1B visa—which allows U.S. employers to hire college-educated workers as well as fashion models from abroad—contains language establishing a “prevailing wage.”4 This prevailing wage requirement is intended to protect the wages of U.S. workers in occupations requiring a college degree from adverse impacts and to prevent college-educated migrant workers from being underpaid and exploited. Corporate lobbyists and other H-1B proponents often cite this prevailing wage requirement in the H-1B law as evidence that H-1B workers cannot be paid less than U.S. workers. However, the reality is that the H-1B statute, regulations, and administrative guidance allow employers wide latitude in setting wage levels....


     Although salary information that corresponds to requested positions on LCAs has been made available by DOL for a number of years through the Office of Foreign Labor Certification’s LCA disclosure data, until recently the prevailing wage levels selected by employers were not readily available. In 2011, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for the first time reported what some had suspected and speculated about but to that point were not able to officially confirm: The vast majority of H-1B jobs were being certified by DOL at the two lowest wage levels.

any update since 2011?

> they need to be paid at least the prevailing wage in their location/job level.

I mean if you follow the law sure.

It's easy to either just pay them below market or hire them at a lower title than the role actually requires.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/h1b_visa_fraud/

https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage...

Fraud should be curbed and punished, but I don't understand why the visa itself is bad because of this, that's like saying people speed and break traffic laws, therefore we must ban vehicles entirely.

Afaik, the federal rule doesn't propose banning H1-B entirely. Nor was I proposing that.

So, it's more like saying "people speed and break traffic laws, therefore we're going to improve enforcement". Reasonable statement to me.

agreed

Or the ultimate work-around, pay then the same and work them twice as hard. Boom, half the wage and nobody can tell!

How many of these consulting companies just have the most awful, toxic company culture imaginable? I don't think that's a coincidence - that's a purposefully engineered cost saving strategy.

That won't work as well as you think it does. This would come off as them being skilled enough to do the work in half the time an American would.

That said, consulting companies out of India are horrible, I don't think they'd be more productive even if they worked twice as hard.

Isn't it directly influencing prevailing wage? When H1-B dominates a sector then I'm competing with H1-B and am forced into that existing wage not the other way around. If I don't want to work in that environment because it fucking sucks well guess who's getting a green card? Whole thing is rotten and software industry is going to become the new "going postal".

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