The watchdog agency's report has drawn reactions from other federal agencies, but particularly the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which builds on the report's finding with recommendations of its own.
The GAO's report ( ) -- one of its most exhaustive studies on the H-1B program by the U.S. in recent years -- sliced and diced data from various agencies about H-1B use, to offer a portrait by country and job skill.
About half of the users work in computer-related occupations in the .
Investigators interviewed users of the visa as well as labor advocates, but focuses many of its recommendations of what federal agencies can be doing better to gather data, report it, and coordinate.
Overall, the report seems to give weight to the concerns raised by supporters and opponents of the program alike.
However, the GAO seeks some improvements. One recommendation calls for creation of a centralized Web site where businesses would be required to post notice of their intent to hire H-1B workers.
This recommendation was endorsed by the DOJ. Leon Rodriguez, the chief of staff of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, wrote in a letter included in the report, that the Web site "would help U.S. workers determine if they have been impermissibly replaced by H-1B visa holders and identify employers who may be engaged in a pattern of discrimination against U.S. workers."
But the DOJ went beyond the GAO's recommendations and made one of the own. It said that all employers, before they hire an H-1B holder, "should be required to 'test' the labor market to determine whether qualified U.S. workers are available and to hire any equally or better qualified U.S. workers who apply."
The U.S. Labor Dept. says that an H-1B employer "is not required to recruit U.S. workers" unless it is deemed dependent employer, meaning it has passed a certain threshold in hiring or is a violator. But these employers need only attest, rather than demonstrate, that they took good faith steps to hire a U.S. worker, according to the GAO.
Between 2000 and 2009, the were born in Asia, with India accounting for about 47% and China, the second largest, at 9%.
Over the same period, more than 40% of approved H-1B workers were approved to fill occupations in systems analysis and programming, the GAO reported.
Among the findings is that H-1B workers are "often not paid wages associated with the highest skills in their fields." The report found that 54% of the workers from June 2009 to July 2010 "were categorized as entry-level positions and were paid at the lowest pay grades allowed under prevailing wage levels."
In a comparison of median annual salaries reveals that for systems analysts, programmers, and other computer-related workers, the GAO said that H-1B workers tended to earn less than U.S. workers, but some of this salary gap appears explained by differences in ages and experience, it noted.
The widest wage differential is for H-1B workers aged 40 to 50. They had median reported earnings that were significantly lower than the median earnings of U.S. workers in these IT occupations, the GAO reported.
But the GAO wasn't able to determine, definitively, the impact of H-1B visa use of the wages of other workers.
An often argued claim is that H-1B use is regulated by the economy, but the GAO said such a relationship to wages can't be inferred. "...[The] number of H-1B petitions tends to rise when wages and employment for U.S. workers are rising (although the number of approvals is limited by the H-1B cap), and to fall when wages and employment for U.S. workers are falling. However, this relationship does not reveal what the wage rates and employment rates of U.S. workers would have been in the absence of H-1B workers."
The GAO also found that over the decade, less than 1% of all employers with approved petitions were approved to hire almost 30% of all H-1B workers. At least 10 of the top 85 H-1B hiring employers in 2009 were companies, of which six have headquarters or operations in India.
The GAO report also maps the frustration of the business community in hiring H-1B workers. It includes criticism directed at the lottery by the government to pick H-1B visa winners once the cap is exceeded.
Businesses are unable to prioritize their candidates for the lottery, the GAO pointed out. The report also describes how some businesses, unable to get an H-1B visa for a job candidate, have employed the worker overseas and then transferred that person to the U.S. on an L-1 visa.
Visa-related paperwork was also a complaint, especially involving a government's "Request for Evidence," which is a formal request by the government for supporting documentation in a visa application.
"An immigration lawyer at a multinational pharmaceutical company said that agency requests for evidence do not always appear to be 'thoughtful,' and cited a Request for Evidence that demanded a review of the qualifications of an applicant who had received a science degree from Oxford University," the GAO reported.
Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .
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