If some of your best friends are H1-B workers wouldn't the right answer be changing the regulations such that companies must pay market rate (as in for the US labor market, not internationally) for H1-B employees here?
In the companies I've worked at, H1-B workers get compensated in software engineering roles just as well as their peers, I've also seen outliers where it's significantly higher (depending on when they joined, how much in demand they were with competing offers, etc).
I getting seemingly contradictory comments here but one could weave a coherent story out of all of them:
1) H1B's get salaries that are comparable to US engineer salaries.
2) A middleman takes a big bite out of that, the engineer thus takes home less.
3) H1B's are essentially like most immigrants, indentured servants who have no freedom to leave their employers, thus have little leverage asking for promotions or even autonomy as an employee.
4) Companies probably are most aware of 3) but it seems like at least for FAANG the biggest factor is they don't want to invest in training people and rather want people who already are skilled and such. It's probably true if you draw your net very tightly yes anyone can find that there aren't enough qualified workers out there who won't demand I guess near half a mill salaries.
I think it's an astro-turf campaign, it feels like it. Because no one thinking logically is gonna push an agenda that hard without actually thinking through it.
Not astroturfing. Technically underpaying is illegal but there are ways around paying an H1-B worker what a US citizen might receive. Title reduction, etc. Even if the total paid is the same, consulting companies that help sponsor workers get a huge cut of the salary so ultimately we have workers being paid less.
> Technically underpaying is illegal but there are ways around paying an H1-B worker what a US citizen might receive. Title reduction, etc. Even if the total paid is the same, consulting companies that help sponsor workers get a huge cut of the salary so ultimately we have workers being paid less.