[ConservingFreedom]

GREAT stuff!

H-1B Is Designed to Allow Employers to Pay Foreign Workers Extremely Low Wages

The first problem in the system is that the employer determines the prevailing wage and the employer can use nearly any source for that determination. Prior to 2005, employers used this combined with the restrictions on enforcement to pay H-1B workers low wages. However, in 2004 Congress explicitly changed the law to allow employers to pay H-1B workers absurdly low wages.

Pettifoggers will tell you that H-1B workers are required to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage or the wage paid to similar workers. And golly gee willikers, it says just that right at the top of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(n)(1). That's enough information for the willful ignorami writing the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

But scroll down to 8 U.S.C. § 1101(p)(4). There you will find that the Department of Labor is required to take an existing wage survey and divide it into four skill level prevailing wages. Notice there is no requirement that the employer pay the H-1B worker at his skill level. Even if there were such a requirement, it would be unenforceable because skill is a subjective measure.

Under this system, employers classify

• 52 percent of H-1B workers at the lowest skill level, where they command a wage at the 17th percentile for the occupation and location.
  
  
• 30 percent at the next lowest skill level, where they command a wage at the 34th percentile.
  
  
• 12 percent at the next skill level, where they command the median (or actual prevailing wage).
  
  
• 6 percent at the highest skill level, where they command a wage at the 67th percentile.

Notice that H-1B workers are "highly skilled" when industry wants more of them, but those very same workers become low-skilled when determining what they have to be paid.

[ConservingFreedom]

More great stuff from the article:

H-1B Is Designed to Allow Employers to Replace Americans with Cheap Foreign Workers

Replacing Americans with H-1B workers has been going on at least since 1994.

In 1998, Congress responded explicitly by making it legal for employers to replace Americans with H-1B workers. Under the current law an employer may replace an American with an H-1B worker unless:

1. The H-1B worker is paid less than $60,000; and
   
   
2. The H-1B worker does not have a graduate degree; and
   
   
3. The employer has more than 15 percent of its total employees on H-1B visas earning less than $60,000 and not having graduate degrees; and
   
   
4. The replacement takes place within 90 days of making the visa petition.

You have to navigate through two levels of misdirection in the code to piece all this together. Congress went to a lot of effort to ensure employers can replace Americans and to hide that fact from the casual reader of the code.