The prevailing wage comes from a chart: you don't just do research or come up with it. Figuring out which prevailing wage to use among the existing job descriptions is already a matter of judgement, and you can just aim for the low one.
Publishing the position locally is easily skirted: It's not published in places that people look at, it's not written in a way that makes it sound appealing, and often has some nonsensical requirements: In practice, you don't get local workers applying to them.
Then, there's how you hire for positions as junior as possible, and you keep the person there for 6+ years (the green card process can take pretty much forever if you are mean enough to your employee).
I was an H1B. My compensation was pretty fair when I started compared to the US employees around me, but as years went by, I kept taking on more responsibilities, but my salary didn't change to match. Once the green card process started, changing jobs became extremely unappealing, not just because risks of having to restart the green card process, but because to apply for a green card, my employer asked me to agree to pay attorney fees and costs if I left before the green card was awarded plus one year. Any job worth applying to would have been higher responsibility than the paper job I had been hired for originally, so would I be able to transfer by PERM filing across employers in the first place? Not guaranteed. So I kept the job: Being European in the early 2000s, there was a signifiant green card backlog for me, but not a decade long, so I could wait. All in all, I was an H1B for 8 years.
In the next 3 years after I got the green card, I changed jobs a couple of times and my salary more than doubled: I went from being called a plain engineer that just happened to report to the CTO to becoming principal engineer at a Fortune 500 corporation. It's 5 years later, and last year I made 5 times what I was making in my last H1B year: That level of catch-up doesn't come from me improving that much in the last few years, but total catch-up from where I started from.
Imagine what the big outsourcers, who handle many thousands of H1B applications a year, can do to suppress wages further.
Thank you for your insightful comment - I wish people like you would testify in front of congress on the abuses of the H1B process that are clearly widespread.
It's depressing to think about the stress and anxiety this might cause someone who is literally facing deportation if he doesn't "suck it up" and keep working at a sweat shop for the same salary they were hired at 5+ years ago.
I'm on an H-1B, and the thing that infuriates me about the dialogue on this is that they are effectively trying to ban skilled immigration, and exclude people like me from coming.
If you don't qualify for the family-based or refugee route, employment-based immigration is the only viable pathway. The amount of hate I see piled on people trying to come here via the employment-based immigration seems insane to me. These people make it seem like employment-based immigration is not as respectable or legitimate, compared to refugee/asylum and family-based immigration.
The problem with requiring higher wagers is that for people like me, who were students in US -- it's very hard to get an ultra-high salary for the first job out of college. I was a student (on an F-1 visa), and my first job out of college offered me $60,000/year. On my first job on my H-1B visa (in NYC), I was offered $85,000 a year (got slightly over $100,000 with bonuses). Then, just about a year and half later, I was paid (mostly through lucky bonuses) slightly over $200,000 in a single year.
If you raised wage requirements, you'd basically be not allowing people like me to continue to stay and work in the US (after graduation from college), and would instead only allow people from outside who have lots of experience (and skill) and can command a much higher salary upfront.
Why even prioritize? The need to prioritize assumes the existence of arbitrary numerical limits on immigration.
I think we should just eliminate the limits on employment-based immigration entirely, with the only restriction being that such immigration does not depress US wages (which is already implemented as the LCA today). At the very least, use qualitative limits, not quantitative limits.
But even better, just let peaceful immigrants in. Before 1921, if you were white, there were no restrictions on you moving to the US. So, let's go back to the pre-1921 immigration policy, with the slight modification that non-white people are not banned. The Libertarian Party makes a good argument: https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration
Immigrants are only going to stay in this country, if they can be successful here. For example, if they can open up a business and generate enough revenue to live a better life, or if they can find a job that affords them a better life than they had in their previous country.
Obviously, only a fool would stay here if their condition of living is worse here. If their life is worse here, they'll just move back! Duh! Immigration dropped sharply during the Great Recession, and large numbers of immigrants were actually leaving the country.
The one restriction I support personally is: No welfare or any kind of public support for immigrants. We don't want moochers. Also: don't allow them to sleep on the streets and stuff. We don't want the poor from the whole world flooding our streets, and asking for hand-outs. Kick them out. If someone can't be economically successful in this country, and make enough money to support themselves (i.e. through a job or a business), don't allow them to stay here. That's a reasonable restriction.
Economics will become a natural regulator of immigration. Those who can be successful here will stay. Those who can't will leave. I can predict that, under such welcoming immigration laws, the country's total GDP will grow massively.
We had an insane level of immigration during the 1880-1921 period, and have we been poorer as a result for it? The US per capita GDP is exceeds that of most Western countries. (I guess one of the downsides is that NYC is now littered with pizza stores everywhere. Thanks Italian immigrants who flooded this country in the early 1900s!) This book covers this history in detail: https://amazon.com/gp/product/0809053446
I'm utterly and thoroughly opposed to those anti-free-market half-loosers who want to "protect" their jobs by preventing competition from others. This is just like the folks who want to require a license for everything, and want to use the power of the state (i.e. the threat of violence) to limit competition from others. With respect to immigration, I very reluctantly (partially) support mandating that immigrants be paid at least as much American workers, as this will prevent wage depression (even though this is an un-libertarian position). Our existing immigration laws already require this with every employment-based visa application. It's called the LCA (Labor Condition Application).
However, from a principled libertarian point of view, if another person else is willing to do your job for less money, well then, that's how much your work is worth. It's bad for society on the whole, for you to artificially inflate your pay grade by limiting the supply of available workers in your field.One of the reasons why medical costs are so high in the United States is that the supply of doctors is severely curtailed by regulation. It drives up cost for everyone, and it a net drag (or a tax) on the rest of people who need medical care. Government-imposed regulatory limits (on professional licensing, trade, immigration, the right to work, etc) protect various small interest groups at cost to everyone else, and are generally bad on the whole.
> Obviously, only a fool would stay here if their condition of living is worse here
The problem is hundreds of millions of people have a very low standard of living; an order of magnitude lower than the average American.
5 people living in the same room earning half of the current federal US minimum wage is a huge increase in quality of life for hundreds of millions of people.
You aren't explaining how an increase in supply for low level jobs, an increase in the demand for housing, an increased demand on infrastructure (police, roads, etc), etc is a benefit to US citizens and will result in a better quality of life for them.
> However, from a principled libertarian point of view
And why should we care about a principled libertarian point of view?
They tend to be ideologues who care more about reasoning from principles than actual real world outcomes.
> earning half of the current federal US minimum wage
As I stated before, I support requiring that immigrants be paid at least as much as U.S. workers for the particular job they take up. For example, if an immigrant is going to do X job, require that they be paid at least as much as what U.S. workers doing that job earn. Our existing immigration laws already require this with every employment-based visa application. It's called the LCA (Labor Condition Application). In terms of where the wage data comes from--the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts wage surveys of almost every job in the country.
To clarify: I'm stating here that I support the principal underlying the LCA, I'm not talking about its implementation. Implementing the LCA properly, and ensuring that it isn't circumvented is not the topic of discussion. Some unethical employers circumvent the LCA today by using a lower-wage job title (like calling a senior developer a QA person) to pay a lower wage. But that's a problem of implementing the law--the law itself is fine, it's the onus of the Executive Branch to make sure it is implemented properly (and not circumvented). We're not discussing that here.
> You aren't explaining how an increase in supply for low level jobs, an increase in the demand for housing, an increased demand on infrastructure (police, roads, etc), etc is a benefit to US citizens
This is one of the most idiotic and brain-dead things anti-immigrant people say. You are assuming that new roads cannot be constructed, new houses cannot be built, and most of all (the biggest mistake people make) that there is only a fixed number of jobs in a country. Please read up on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
Since the founding of this country, we had a century and half of mass immigration from Europe. Just think of what's happened. New towns were built, cities expanded, and new infrastructure was built to support the booming population. The economy expanded. Your theory implies that the number of jobs, houses, roads, etc would remain fixed to the number they were in 1789. What an idiotic theory.
The least bit of economic investigation shows that it is false. A bit of common sense also shows it is false. Immigrants typically add to the economy of the country. Numerous studies have measured the economic impact of immigrants on the U.S. economy, and have shown it to be a huge net benefit for the native (US citizen) population. For an excellent study, see The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/23550/the-economic-and-fiscal-co...
This stupid fucking theory is so brain-dead, and has been used over and over by anti-immigrant people (like Jeff Sessions) as an argument to effectively ban all immigration, that it makes me want punch the face of the person repeating it. At this point, I automatically assume that the person saying it must be using it knowingly as a straw man argument to ban all immigration, and their real motivation is not based in economics, but rather in xenophobia and/or racism.
> For example, if an immigrant is going to do X job, require that they be paid at least as much as what U.S. workers doing that job earn.
We have strong evidence that price fixing doesn't work. You can't double or triple the supply and use a half baked law to keep the price high.
I don't know why you think basic economics doesn't apply to labor.
> But that's a problem of implementing the law--the law itself is fine
That is naive. The truth is these kinds of laws are very expensive to enforce.
Should each immigrant put up a $20k bond?
> You are assuming that new roads cannot be constructed, new houses cannot be built, and most of all
Stop creating strawman arguments.
Adding and expanding infrastructure to a dense city is incredibly expensive. It cost my local government $100 million to widen a few hundred meter stretch of road.
> and most of all (the biggest mistake people make) that there is only a fixed number of jobs in a country
Again, stop creating strawman arguments.
I am arguing that a lot of the working poor will be worse off under your economic free for all. You haven't provided a shred of evidence as to why that won't be the case.
I don't believe there are a fixed number of jobs but I also understand how difficult it is to change fields even as a well educated reasonably wealthy individual.
We have a huge amount of evidence that the working poor struggle to adapt to changing labor markets.
The way you jump to claims of racism and xenophobia despite having put up a very weak argument is telling.
Your desire to justify immigration restriction using even the weakest arguments possible was very frustrating to me, and I responded with fairly strong language in my earlier comment, and it was flagged as a result. So I'll comment again without the strong language:
> Should each immigrant put up a $20k bond?
Compliance with wage requirements is the duty of the employer, not the employee. According to your logic, we would punish U.S. workers who are not paid the $7.25 federal minimum wage by asking them to pay $20,000 instead of taking action against the employers who fail to comply with the minimum wage law. So your statement is illogical and invalid.
> Adding and expanding infrastructure to a dense city is incredibly expensive. It cost my local government $100 million to widen a few hundred meter stretch of road.
If your city overspent on roads, that's a result of corruption and/or government inefficiency -- a different and unrelated problem. The cost of increasing infrastructure is paid for by the taxpayers. Immigrants pay taxes, and thus increase tax revenue. If there is a gap in the additional cost and the additional tax revenue generated by immigrants, that is a result of government inefficiency and possibly corruption.
The solution to that problem is to fix government inefficiency, the solution is not to ban immigrants. So your argument here is also invalid.
> I am arguing that a lot of the working poor will be worse off under your economic free for all.
According to your theory, the working poor should have been decimated by the mass immigration from Europe that occurred during much of US history. It wasn't.
Immigration contributes to economic growth. The poorest and least-skilled US workers might be impacted, but that is not the issue at hand here. We're discussing the immigration of educated, skilled immigrants.
To recap: you made a straw man argument about your city's extreme inefficiency at building roads. Then you mentioned something about putting up a bond, perhaps as a joke. That's why I brought up the possibility of xenophobia and/or racism, since these sort of comments make me wonder what the real motivations behind this is.
From a libertarian point of view, the problem I have with immigrant-hating people is that they're advocating for the use of violence (i.e. "immigration enforcement") against peaceful immigrants. Libertarians believe the use of violence against peaceful immigrants is wrong: https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration The Libertarians whom you dismissed as "ideologues" are people who are motivated by a strong sense of right and wrong. I know people who were brought here as young children, who've lived here their whole lives. Not that I think this makes them more deserving of being allowed to stay -- any and all peaceful persons should be allowed to stay. But anti-immigrant folk want to send men with guns into their homes, drag them out forcibly at gunpoint, throw them in a cage at some detention facility, and then ship them off to some random country. And for what? They were living peaceful and productive lives here. These anti-immigrant people want to use violence to destroy the lives of peaceful immigrants. I find this evil and immoral.
There are many instances of name calling in these comments, and the guidelines ask us to leave these out. I acknowledge that this is a controversial issue and these threads tend to heat up fairly quickly, but we have to do a better job of discussion and offer more resistance to this tendency.
Well, unless they are flagrantly violating labor rules/constitutional rights of the person by monitoring them at all times, there's really nothing (except the green card process I guess) that stops a worker on H1B from scouting for other opportunities that would pay better. Not all H1B's work for sweatshops, but I understand the system has been abused a lot.
> The prevailing wage comes from a chart: you don't just do research or come up with it.
Interestingly, companies can provide their own wage surveys in order to justify the salary on an LCA. They aren't required to use the DoL wage data. [0]
"For the H-1B, H-1B1, and E-3 programs, employers have the option of using one of three wage sources to obtain the prevailing wage: (1) requesting a prevailing wage from the NPWC; (2) using a survey conducted by an independent authoritative source; or (3) using another legitimate source of information."
Larger companies are using #3. Since it is so vague and there isn't any oversight within the program they are able to manipulate the survey to provide results to their benefit while still claiming "We pay the prevailing wage! (according to our shady wage survey)"
Publishing the position locally is easily skirted: It's not published in places that people look at, it's not written in a way that makes it sound appealing, and often has some nonsensical requirements: In practice, you don't get local workers applying to them.
Then, there's how you hire for positions as junior as possible, and you keep the person there for 6+ years (the green card process can take pretty much forever if you are mean enough to your employee).
I was an H1B. My compensation was pretty fair when I started compared to the US employees around me, but as years went by, I kept taking on more responsibilities, but my salary didn't change to match. Once the green card process started, changing jobs became extremely unappealing, not just because risks of having to restart the green card process, but because to apply for a green card, my employer asked me to agree to pay attorney fees and costs if I left before the green card was awarded plus one year. Any job worth applying to would have been higher responsibility than the paper job I had been hired for originally, so would I be able to transfer by PERM filing across employers in the first place? Not guaranteed. So I kept the job: Being European in the early 2000s, there was a signifiant green card backlog for me, but not a decade long, so I could wait. All in all, I was an H1B for 8 years.
In the next 3 years after I got the green card, I changed jobs a couple of times and my salary more than doubled: I went from being called a plain engineer that just happened to report to the CTO to becoming principal engineer at a Fortune 500 corporation. It's 5 years later, and last year I made 5 times what I was making in my last H1B year: That level of catch-up doesn't come from me improving that much in the last few years, but total catch-up from where I started from.
Imagine what the big outsourcers, who handle many thousands of H1B applications a year, can do to suppress wages further.