H-1B Pay Drags Down All Salaries

Immigrant engineers with H-1B visas may be earning up to 23 percent less on average than American engineers with similar jobs, according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. Salary data from Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) lends credence to arguments that lower compensation paid to H-1B workers suppresses the wages of other electronics professionals.

The lower LCA-based pay rates, considered unreliable by some, raise questions about the value of H-1B workers--and of U.S. engineers in general--to their employers, and add fuel to the debate that has long swirled around the H-1B program.

LCA "wage rate" and "prevailing wage" data are not actual salaries. But the average salaries calculated by EE Times based on that data indicate that employers are paying H-1B workers less than Bureau of Labor Statistics wage estimates. That's illegal, according to the Department of Labor, which administers the H-1B program. The department requires an employer to pay H-1B workers the same as other workers with similar skills and qualifications, or the prevailing wage, whichever is higher.

"There are plenty of studies, including my own, that show this disparity in wages," said Norm Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, who writes frequently on immigration employment and H-1B visa issues. Lower salaries undermine employers' contention that they need H-1B workers to fill jobs for which Americans can't be found, Matloff said. "Otherwise, salaries would be rising."

The average H-1B salaries calculated by EE Times are based on data from 459 of 65,536 LCA petitions filed by employers seeking permission to hire immigrant professionals in federal fiscal year 2005. Specifically, the data comes from LCAs naming one of three positions commonly held by engineers: electronics engineers, electrical engineers and computer hardware engineers.

The average salary cited in the LCAs for each of the three positions was below the mean annual salaries for those jobs in 2004 as determined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics survey of employers.

The average annual wage or salary for electronics engineers was $69,851 in the LCAs, or 9.8 percent less than the $77,450 mean annual-wage estimate determined by the BLS OES survey. The LCA average for electrical engineers was $63,268, or 14.7 percent less than the OES survey's $74,220 mean. And the LCA average for computer hardware engineers was $64,426, or 23.3 percent less than the $84,010 average found by the OES survey. (A detailed comparison of LCA-based and OES salaries can be found in this week's By the Numbers, page 26.)

Underpaid H-1B workers displace American information technology workers and put undue pressure on salaries, said Kim Berry, a software developer who serves as president of The Programmers Guild, an activist group for IT industry professionals. "This is happening under the radar across the country," he said.

Prevailing wage
Intel Corp. compensates its H-1B workers "under the same structure as our domestic employees," a company spokeswoman said. "It's actually illegal to pay less than the prevailing wage for any employee sponsored under the H-1B visa." Intel employs approximately 3,000 H-1Bs, a majority of whom work in VLSI design, device physics or optics, the spokeswoman said.

IBM Corp. takes guidance on salaries for its roughly 2,500 H-1B visa workers from BLS OES data. "We get our numbers from the OES page," an IBM spokesman said. "We do that every time." An overwhelming majority of those workers are engineers, and their benefits package is similar to what IBMers receive. IBM complies with all Department of Labor wage requirements, the spokesman added.

H-1B visas allow IBM to "tap into global sources of information," the spokesman said, echoing industry supporters of the H-1B visa program. Started in 1990, the program has polarized factions within the electronics industry. Employers say the visas allow them to hire needed talent; detractors say it puts U.S. citizens out of work, engenders fraud and promotes exploitation of immigrants.

"I work with those H-1Bs, and as far as I know they are getting half of what we get," said Shahid Sheikh, a senior software developer with TAC Worldwide in Jacksonville, Fla. "I get a normal salary. I get $80,000 a year. They get a maximum $40,000 a year." Sheikh, who worked under an H-1B visa when he emigrated from Bangladesh 12 years ago, said the program is "filled with fraud and cheating." He was naturalized about two years ago.

President Bush weighed in on H-1B visas in February, when he called the current annual limit of 65,000 visas a "problem" and urged Congress to "raise that cap." The U.S. Senate voted in March to increase the annual limit to 115,000 for fiscal 2007. The House hasn't taken up the issue. Employer applications for H-1Bs reached the fiscal 2006 cap of 65,000 last August, two months before the current fiscal year began on Oct. 1. Applications for fiscal 2007 have already maxed out the 65,000-visa allotment.

Current limits on H-1B visas essentially promote a nonimmigration policy for the United States and endanger the competitiveness of U.S. industry, said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a think tank that "pursue[s] and promote[s] debate consistent with an American entrepreneurial spirit that is welcoming to new people, ideas and innovation," according to the group's Web site. "Except for a short window of time, no one can hire a new H-1B because the cap keeps getting hit before the experiment's even started," Anderson said.

Anderson said employers don't use H-1B visas to lower wages and decried the "myth" that each H-1B worker replaces a U.S. worker. Immigrants help create jobs and innovation, he said. Rather than preserving U.S. jobs, H-1B visa caps drive companies to expand overseas to preserve flexibility, in Anderson's view. "The more we continue current policy, the more this will happen," he said.

H-1B visas account for a fraction of the work forces of multinational employers like Intel and IBM. Less than 3 percent of Intel's employees hold H-1B visas, and more than 50 percent of its 99,000 workers worldwide are in the United States. IBM's total of 2,500 H-1Bs pales next to the company's 43,000 employees in India.

The number of H-1B visas issued for high-tech occupations is too few to affect the salaries of the larger U.S. labor force, according to Jeremy Leonard, chief economist at American Sentinel University. By 2004, a total of 139,000 H-1B visas were issued for information technology professionals, a broad classification that includes computer occupations and engineers. "In comparison, the U.S. IT labor force, using a relatively narrow definition, numbers about 3 million," Leonard said. In 2003, 12 percent of H-1B holders were in engineering occupations and 28 percent were in computer jobs, Leonard said.

While U.S. electronics industry employment levels and pay increases both trail boom-year levels (see "Jobs data spurs debate" in By the Numbers, June 12, page 30), H-1B visas are not to blame, Leonard said. BLS data shows a 23.3 percent increase in hardware engineering jobs from 2000 to 2005, and a 5.1 percent increase in electronics engineering jobs over that span. "So employment in these occupations certainly hasn't declined due to H-1B visas," he said.

Nigel Brent, president of Nigel B. Design Inc., an amplifier manufacturer based in California, said he's fed up with engineers complaining about immigrants taking American jobs. "This is so bogus," he said. "The truth is that people are lured to come here from many different countries with the promise of higher salaries, better lifestyle and standard of living than their home countries can provide."

The United States has grown strong with the constant influx of immigrants, said Brent, who emigrated from Britain almost 30 years ago and became a U.S. citizen in the 1980s. "The upside with the present H-1B system is that jobs stay in America. Every H-1B who comes here supports the economy with the food they buy, the cars they buy, the house they buy. I could go on with the many benefits that the trickle effects of being here bring to the economy."

Writing in the June 12 issue of the Financial Times, IBM chairman and chief executive officer Sam Palmisano said that a modern company must resist anti-globalization fervor and become a "globally integrated enterprise." The alternative is grim, he wrote. "Left unaddressed, the issues surrounding globalization will only grow. People may ultimately choose to elect governments that impose strict regulations on trade or labor, perhaps of a highly protectionist sort," said Palmisano.

NFAP's Anderson criticized what he called basic flaws in using LCA wage data as a stand-in for H-1B salaries. "One is that you're comparing the prevailing wage, basically the minimum an employer would have to pay others similarly employed at the firm," he said. Second, LCA minimums wouldn't approach average salaries of all U.S. professionals, some with decades of job experience, he said.

The tactic of presenting LCA wages as salaries was used in "The Bottom of the Pay Scale," a report on the salaries of computer programmers published last December by the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit research organization "animated by a . . . vision which seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted," according to the CIS Web site.

Professor Matloff rebuffed Anderson's criticism and raised questions about his objectivity. "He's a lobbyist," Matloff said.

Using LCA data to reflect salaries is sound methodology, Matloff said, because the data "tracks very well" with H-1B compensation data in an annual report published by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a bureau of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "I have confidence the LCA data is reliable," Matloff said. "And I'm a former statistics professor."

Which is why the Senate wanted to boost the number from 65,000 to 115,000 .

It they're jobs "Americans won't do" or "Americans are too stupid to do", that's one thing, reducing labor costs is another.

'H-1B Only' Job Ad Posters Accused of Discrimination

The Programmers Guild, an IT worker interest group, has filed 300 discrimination complaints so far this year against companies alleged to have posted "H-1B visa holders only" ads on job boards.

"The upside with the present H-1B system is that jobs stay in America. Every H-1B who comes here supports the economy with the food they buy, the cars they buy, the house they buy. I could go on with the many benefits that the trickle effects of being here bring to the economy."

The house they buy??? Obviously, he doesn't know too many H1B visa workers. They don't buy houses, they live in apartments, or rental houses, and pack them with their friends/or family that are also here on H1B status. They send the money back home, just like the Mexican immigrants do.

Any minute now the so-called freepers who favor ANYTHING that will help foreign "workers" will be in droves to tell us that it "just tough" IF Americans lose their jobs to NON-CITIZENS-NON-USMILITARY-VETS from around the world.

After all, those who PAY TAXES AND VOTE FOUGHT for our country and SERVED in the military services of this country are just TOO STUPID TO COMPETE WITH THOSE THIRD WORLD GENIUS'!!

sarcasm off!!

YES THE SAME CRUMMY THIRD WORLDERS WHO HATE AMERICA AND WOULD KICK US OUT OF OWN COUNTRY IF THEY COULD!!

This is a touchy subject for me as I have a BSc in Computer Science and my Congressman and Senators know that I will not vote for them if they raise the cap.

With that said, I had worked at a Fortune 500 company and many of us were laid off while the H1-Bs remained. Nuff said.

I had to laugh at Linda Chavez when she tried to make the point that they "paid" realestate taxes in their rent. When you "pack" a house, it does not translate to taxes to support the school system they overuse.

I have relatives who went into or back into the military after they were laid off in favor of H1-Bs.... they were in engineering or computer sciences.

All have served now in Iraq, Korea and Afganistan.. and temporaily, in NEW ORLEANS!!!

Funny, thing there are NO H1-Bs in the military.... guess ONLY Americans can carry that HEAVY LOAD!!

My husband made the acquaintance of some H1B folks that worked in a building hear him. We visited their apartment once, there were at least 8 people living in an 800 sq ft 2 bedroom apartment. Don't get me wrong, the apartment was in a nice complex and clean, just crowded. They split the rent 8 ways, so they each were paying around 100 bucks a month for rent/etc.

I used to work as a desktop support/network engineer for a large Wall Street brokerage firm. When downsizing occurred during the 2002 recession, the company used that opportunity to release American workers, while retaining foreign workers on the H-1B visa program. When I left, the bulk of engineers remaining were foreigners, which provided the company with cheap, easy to exploit labor.

Qualified American engineers need not apply.

The ones around here are packed into TWO bedroom apartments by the TENS!!

We were overrun by these guys at my old job (financial services, automotive loans) ... they could code (badly) but had troubles with the toilets. Seems they stood on the rim, squated and did their business. I've never seen janitors ready to kill people before, but I did there.

We were considering making a series of quick reference technical guides for them covering bathings, toilet and deoderant usage.

This was years ago, but my BIL actually enlisted in the USNavy, and he was Canadian at the time. He has since been naturalized, as has my husband. But I think there are many "immigrants" that enroll in the service as a legal way to gain citizenship. H1B folks, do not because they're brought over to work specifically for a certain job or company.

Even if it was clean... that is not up to code in most MODERN American cities and in some places illegal if the folks are UNRELATED.

They lower our standards and they take AMERICANS jobs. THEY NEED TO GO @#$@$#$$ AWAY!

A major reason for the wage disparity is the fact that many H-1B workers are Indian whose standard of living and COL factors are substantially different from those of their American counterparts.

Look, I am writing about MOST people who join the USA military. While I even knew a Hungarian immigrant when I was in the Army in Korea, MOST of my pals were AMERICAN CITIZENS, then and NOW.

It is great that some folks become citizens after being our military..my buddy, "Hunkie" as he called himself, did it and he had been wounded slightly too.

But,gee whizzzzzzz, AMERICA should show some loyalty to its OWN ... JUST AS THEY EXPECT AMERICANS TO SHOW LOYALTY TO AMERICA AND HER MILITARY.

Oh, yeah, I am old fashioned, so what?

I'll go you one better....the Fortune 500 firm I work for now had a significant downsizing effort over five years that made no apologies for releasing over 10,000 domestic employees. In fact, while the layoffs were hitting every day, job descriptions and paper-titles were being changed to accommodate the "new" workforce of H1B's. It was all completely legal and I'm sure we're saving a ton on payroll.

I'm still here, but the last time I worked a project with another "domestic" employee was many years ago. I call all the H1B's "Corky" just to have a laugh at their expense. My number could be up any day.

This is a touchy subject for me as I have a BSc in Computer Science and my Congressman and Senators know that I will not vote for them if they raise the cap...With that said, I had worked at a Fortune 500 company and many of us were laid off while the H1-Bs remained. Nuff said.

In a similar vein, the Wall St Journal ran an interesting article (didn't post it, pay site) on the CPA shortage that's developed over the past few years. Among the points, some usage was being made of CPAs from India, particularly outsourcing, but more importantly the number of college accounting majors has tripled over the last 5 years. The market will solve the shortage. But only if allowed to. Another problem with H1-Bs which the article allude to is that if generously available, they essentially define compensation in a particular industry to entry level status.

A major reason for the wage disparity is the fact that many H-1B workers are Indian whose standard of living and COL factors are substantially different from those of their American counterparts.

Substantially lower than migrants from south of the border as well. As are education costs.

Oh, that was a visual I did not enjoy.

I would have helped the janitors kick their assetts if given a HALF chance.

Poor AMERICAN WORKERS CLEANING UP THE CRAP OF UNCIVILIZED THIRD WORLDERS WHO WERE PROBABLY MAKING TRIPLE WHAT THOSE JANITORS WERE PAID, HOW DISGUSTING!!!!!!!!

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Analysis: H-1B Pay Drags Down All Salaries

In the engineering profession, pay for foreigners on H-1B visas is up to 23% lower than that for American workers, according to an analysis by Electronic Engineering Times.