The H-1B program: Mend it, don't end it
program is that it depresses the wages of U.S. workers, or as Hira puts it, “prevailing wage is not market wage.”
As an employer of H-1B IT professionals and, therefore, antithetical to IEEE-USA, Bill Gates is singled out for particularly serious attack - even to the extent that one could reasonably infer that Hira believes Gates lied to Congress. Hira writes, “even at the 75th percentile, new H-1B computing professionals earned just $60,000, a far cry from the impression left by Microsoft’s Bill Gates that most H-1B workers are paid $100,000 or more.” In support of his claim, Hira cites Washington Post columnist David Broder, “last year (2006) … Mr. Gates told him that H-1B jobs at Microsoft start at $1000,000 and Mr. Gates repeated the same figure during his testimony before the Senate a few weeks ago.” Precisely, and contrary to the implication of lying to Congress, computer professionals at Microsoft are paid $100,000 per year.
More significantly, the Code of Federal Regulations requires that H-1B employers gain “certification” of a “Labor Condition Application” (LCA) in which the employer attests that they will pay the H-1B employee the greater of the “actual wage” (paid to the employer’s other employees at the worksite with similar experience and qualifications for the specific employment) or the “prevailing wage” for the occupational classification in the area of intended employment.
Hira argues that, “[w]hile the regulations governing the prevailing wage appear to be reasonable on paper, in practice they are ineffective.” As evidence for this contention, he cites instances in which Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) gained “certification” of an LCA to pay ten computer programmers $8.22 an hour and in which Infosys was “certified” to hire 100 programmers at $9.15 an hour. He continues that, “[t]hese applications (LCAs) comply with the law, illustrating that the prevailing wage regulations can easily be met without paying market wages.”
This statement is not accurate. Certification of an LCA by the Department of Labor (DOL) does not mean that the “prevailing wage” listed on the LCA “complies with the law” or “meets regulatory requirements.”
Hira is correct that, “[t]he (LCA) review process is completely automated, with no person reviewing applications, and the employer is not required to submit any supporting documentation.”
LCAs are filed electronically with the DOL and, absent clear fraud or omission of required attestations and information, they are automatically certified. The electronic automated system replaced one in which LCAs were submitted
