People brought into the company under an H1-B visa make less money than US citizens, right? This is another ploy like outsourcing to bring the salary of US citizens down lower. Here is something interesting. Recent research from the University of Maryland shows that the opposite may be true. H1-B visa workers make more money than their US citizen counterparts in the IT industry.The study took education and experience into account. It found that H1-B visa holders made about 9% more in pay than US citizens. This is the inverse of the situation with green card holders making 13% less than US citizens. The UMD findings contradict other studies and information previously available. Back in the early 2000's, they found H1-B visa holders making $75k average salaries.
Why is this so? One theory is that companies are getting specialized skills from outside the country, and they need to pay to attract the talent. The H1-B visa holders are also temporary workers. Temp workers in general make more than long term employees. More than half of all H1-B visas are for IT work. Maybe their presence is not all that bad for the locals.
