The H-1B swindle

25.10.2005
Von Ephraim Schwartz

It appears there is hard evidence to prove that employers are using the H-1B visa program to hire cheap labor; that is, to pay lower wages than the national average for programming jobs.

According to "The Bottom of the Pay Scale: Wages for H-1B Computer Programmers -- F.Y. 2004," a report by Programmers Guild board member John Miano, non-U.S. citizens working in the United States on an H-1B visa are paid "significantly less than their American counterparts." How much less? "On average, applications for H-1B workers in computer occupations were for wages $13,000 less than Americans in the same occupation and state."

Miano based his report on OES (Occupational Employment Statistics) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which estimates wages for the entire country by state and metropolitan area. The report"s H-1B wage data came from the U.S. Department of Labor"s H-1B disclosure Web site.

Miano went out of his way to be balanced, and whenever possible he gave the benefit of the doubt to the employer. For example, he used OES data from 2003 because this is the wage information that would have been available to the employers when filing an LCA (labor condition application).

Miano had some difficulty matching OES job codes with LCA job titles, which employers typically create. Where both the OES and the LCA listed a job as "programmer/analyst," Miano took the conservative approach of assuming that the LCA was describing a programmer, a job title that typically earns a lower wage than a systems analyst.