yes, despite lots of anecdotes of them being paid more or similar. glassdoor has an article saying they're paid higher but their methodology is crap - it doesn't account for the size of the employer (which tend to be much larger on average if they're hiring lots of h1b, and also pay higher) and that h1b workers are likely later in career than entry level. also glassdoor's customers are companies, so of course they're going to toe the line.

a better source is Economic Policy Institute, which is associated with left-wing people and so therefore presumably not being anti-immigrant, says:

"DOL lets H-1B employers undercut local wages. Sixty percent of H-1B positions certified by the U.S. Department of Labor are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation."

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

and also supports my earlier claim too:

"top 30 H-1B employers accounted for more than one in four of all 389,000 H-1B petitions"

link has lots of other pretty damning evidence.

i think the simplest argument is:

1. these companies have verifiably illegally engaged in wage suppression through gentlemen's agreements between CEOs (including apple/meta/google)

2. companies try as hard as possible to pay their employees as low as possible

3. why in the world would they hire h1bs that cost more when the two points above are true

4. ???

5. profit