Foreign H-1B visa workers are “vastly underpaid” compared to their American counterparts doing the same work, researchers have found.
The Economic Policy Institute research, conducted partially by Ron Hira, who is considered the leading expert on fraud and abuse within the H-1B visa program, reviewed wage data from HCL Technologies, which is India’s third-largest outsourcing firm and whose clients include Microsoft, Disney, Boeing, FedEx, Google, T-Mobile, and Keurig Dr. Pepper, among others.
“H-1B workers both hired in India and in the U.S. are shown to be vastly underpaid compared with their U.S. citizen and permanent resident counterparts not hired with H-1B visas,” the research found when reviewing data from HCL Tech:
According to HCL’s own calculations, the firm systematically pays H-1B workers much less than its U.S. workers — as much as 47% — contravening HCL’s attestations in its visa applications where it promises to pay the actual wage if it is higher than the prevailing wage. [Emphasis added]
The researchers noted that “HCL underpays H-1B workers in virtually all jobs across all business lines, and it carefully manages and tracks wage differentials” with “the percentage difference that U.S. citizens are paid more is very large, ranging from 13% to 87%.”
Overall, the researchers found that HCL Tech saves at least $95 million a year by paying its H-1B visa workforce far less than their American counterparts.
“That’s $95 million in stolen wages from H-1B workers every year — white-collar wage theft on a grand scale — which has been facilitated by negligent labor standards enforcement in the H-1B program,” the researchers concluded.
Similar research published in the Journal of Business Ethics this year revealed that Deloitte paid foreign H-1B visa workers about 10 percent less than Americans doing the same line of work, Breitbart News reported.
For years, Breitbart News has chronicled the abuses against white-collar American professionals as a result of the H-1B visa program. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements.
Analysis conducted in 2018 discovered that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley, California, are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. Up to 99 percent of foreign H-1B visa workers imported by the top eight outsourcing firms arrive from India.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.