[thisislife2]

You missed the obvious - foreign workers can be exploited by paying them less. Are there Americans with an engineering degrees that are also willing to work for 10+ hours daily, at $150,000 annually, for a job that usually pays $200,000 to $300,000? That is all the H1B (in IT at least) is about - cheap labour, and a potential immigrant pool. Blaming Indians or other Asians for this (like some others do here) is just stupid politics. "Indians hire Indians" is just Indians following company policy to hire cheaper labour.

[raw_anon_1111]

This is so much bubble thinking. The average senior developer in America barely make $150K. Most will never see $200K inflation adjusted in their entire career. Hell the way comp has stagnated for software engineers in tier 2 cities - where most work at banks, insurance companies, “the enterprise” - may never see $200K nominally. You can even look and see what most YC companies pay their “founding engineers”.

Yes I know what BigTech an adjacent makes. Been there done that.

[thisislife2]

Yes, these are probably inflated. I should have clarified these are example figures. Note though the $150k I quoted is a factual figure - there are other jobs in IT besides developer for which H1Bs are hired too. For example, I had system administration or database administration in mind and the $150k I cited is what some H1Bs I know in this field earn in NY today, in telecom or finance. Interestingly, when one of my friend on H1B in Texas became a US citizen, he immediately got an offer with a $50k pay hike from another firm. Another thing to keep in mind is that most H1Bs in IT are contract workers. The outsourcing firm may charge $150K for their work, but the actual salary to the worker will be way less. So there is indeed often a big pay gap when you go through the actual convoluted way this system works.

[ecshafer]

People always make the huge salary argument. But youre totally right. Your average senior engineer in US is making $130k. These $300k salaries are relatively rare. But people hire H1B to pay them $90k and save on benefits and salary.

[jen20]

The monetary saving is almost never the reason - the inability to push back on whatever crazy half-assed, maybe illegal horse shit that an incompetent manager wants to be done without blowing up their entire lives is the reason they are hired.