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Work @ Less Pay
One requisite of the H-1B is that workers on these visas should get paid the prevailing wage rate — this is ostensibly to safeguard American jobs. In reality, though, often the H-1B visa holders get paid less than their American counterparts.
A 2007 report by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals that in fiscal 2005, H-1B employer prevailing wage claims averaged $16,000 below the median wage for U.S. computer workers in the same location and occupation.
H-1B visa holders themselves testify to being paid lower than their American counterparts. “It’s well known that Indian H-1B visa holders get paid less than their American counterparts,” says an ex TCS employee who spent two years in the U.S. on an L-1. “How much the difference is, I don’t know. But I can wager that if an American programmer gets about $75,000 to $100,000 a year, his H-1B counterpart will get about $65,000.”
“[In the case of L-1s] in most cases the employee package consists of the Indian salary, U.S. salary as agreed upon and daily allowance. Overall the package has to be competitive otherwise employees will leave the company,” says Raj Chaturvedi, a green-card holder who works for a retail company as a senior IT Manager. “However, this package may still be far less than what a local resource may get,” he adds.
But outsourcing companies are quick to defend themselves. Bill Gates had told the Senate last spring that Microsoft starts its fresh grads on an H-1B at about $100,000 a year. This was subsequently contested with offshoring critic Robert Oak and Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, claiming that the median salary at Microsoft was $71,000, well below Gate’s claim of $100,000.
“If you pay your H-1Bs a lower salary, they will find another job,” says Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, CEO, Zensar. “If you don’t pay market salaries, you won’t get market talent.”
“In the ninetees, many small Indian and U.S. companies often didn’t even pay their H-1B staff. They were given a room and a basic allowance until a suitable project was found. Often this extended into months and people stayed on because they saw the H-1B as a passport to a green card,” says a green-card holder who first came to the U.S. almost a decade ago on an H-1B. “But now things are different. Because of opportunities in India, people are not that keen to come to the U.S.”
Visa Holders: Unperturbed
While political lobbies and companies seem to be battling it out, visa holders themselves — and, indeed, even their American colleagues — seem largely unperturbed.
“There is very little possibility that the U.S. government doesn’t know about the visa misuse,” says the ex TCS employee we spoke to. “But tech companies prefer Indian workers because they are better skilled than their American counterparts.”
Whether Indians are “better skilled” is subjective. Yet, a poll running on the personal blog of Phil Fersht, Manager at Deloitte Consulting, indicates that people, in general, don’t feel threatened by the increasing number of H-1Bs. Almost 80% of respondents to the poll say that “H-1B visas for outsourcing providers should be increased;” 10.5% say that “H-1B visas for outsourcing providers should be reduced;” and only 5.3% say that “the current allocation of H-1B visas for outsourcing providers is appropriate.”
Most shrug off the issue as pre-election hullabaloo, though one that can have significant fallout. “We saw such activity in 2006 [mid-term elections] when there was legislation around data security that would have the effect of reducing offshoring activity,” says Neil Hirshman, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis, an international law firm. “It is, after all, politically popular to protect jobs.”
“I work with about five H-1B holders of Indian origin, and find that they have the right skill sets and they are very dedicated,” says Michael J. Hennessey, SGI Video Systems Support Engineer. “I don’t agree with the Senators; I don’t believe that the U.S. is losing out.” And this is from an American tech worker, whose cause the Senators are supposedly arguing.
With inputs from Rinku Tyagi
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