Most H1-B are required to work at a prevailing wage. In my experience with programmers it is at or above the level I would have paid an America if I could have found one.
But my daughter is a chemist. Chemist lab workers and software testers are full of Indian and Pakistani H1-B workers who flood the market and undoubtedly lower wages in both areas. My daughter could make more waiting tables than working in a lab as a chemist.
Not so. From https://cis.org/Miano/Primer-Reporters-Looking-H1B-Program:
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
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.
Also notice that if the H-1B program excluded aliens paid less than the actual prevailing wage, the quota would not come close to being reached.
For example, in Silicon Valley the prevailing wage for a programmer is $93,891. However, an employer can legally pay an H-1B worker $57,179. An employer can save $36,000 a year by going H-1B. It is no wonder that H-1B workers are concentrated in high-wage locations of the country.
But my daughter is a chemist. Chemist lab workers and software testers are full of Indian and Pakistani H1-B workers who flood the market and undoubtedly lower wages in both areas.
So you see how H-1B betrays its professed intentions.
I can tell you explicitly that is not the case at major banks. I know this because the Indians themselves have told me they do not get paid as much as Americans. Given the big office buildings for these major banks are absolutely stuffed full of Indians....AT LEAST 25% of the workforce....I can easily believe it.
No, its not just IT. Yes, they could easily find Americans to do those jobs. They just want cheap labor.