The fee exceeds what many of these engineers earn in a year, with the average H-1B salary at TCS running about $105,000. A typical engineer deployed to an American client site generates $150,000 to $200,000 in annual billings at roughly 10% operating margins, producing $15,000 to $20,000 in yearly profit. The $100,000 upfront fee eliminates five to six years of that entire profit stream. J.P. Morgan states bluntly that the move effectively “prices out the utility of H-1B as a source of labor supply.”