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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

You linked to an article that references a study. Care to share the original data?

The Department of Labor has wage floors for H1-Bs (prevailing wage). Company's can't legally pay below that.

Increasing the quantity supplied at the "prevailing wage" by way of H-1B depresses the prevailing wage from rising to what it would be in the absence of the H-1B for the positions for which H-1B has increased the supply (and has knock-on effects for other areas of work, because the Americans that don't get employed in the positions covered by H-1Bs then are competing in fields they otherwise wouldn't be, increasing the quantity supplied at any given price point in those fields.)

Its not only basic economics, but if it didn't work that way, there'd be no benefit to employers from the H-1B existing to justify the compliance costs.

The point was that companies are underpaying H1-B workers. My argument is that there are floor wages they can't pay below.

You're making another point about the impact of immigration. I don't disagree and it extends beyond immigration. If you open a new medical school you're depressing the wages of doctors. Just take a look at what happened to the legal profession.

>> The Department of Labor has wage floors for H1-Bs (prevailing wage). Company's can legally pay below that.

Companies play games with the experience levels and titles to force wages lower. An "architect" or "developer" gets replaced with an "analyst" or "engineer" making 2/3rds as much.

and H1-B body shops force their workers to work umpteen hours of overtime, bill the clients for it, and H1-B workers get no compensation for all the overtime.

and H1-B body shops do shady things like delay payments, take 'fees' out of payments, pay in rupees, etc.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26778017/tech-company...

as go the unions, so go the workers...

Many countries are lowering the wage requirement. My country (Ireland) is lowering it from ~30k to ~25k. I'm pretty sure the US is too?

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