A study by the Center for Immigration Studies found that Indians working in the US temporarily get nearly $13,000 a year less than their American counterparts.
NEW DELHI: A study that fuelled a debate in the US on the merits of H1-B visa has found that Indians working there temporarily get nearly $13,000 a year less than their American counterparts.
The December 2005 findings by Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), on whose basis two US Senators wrote to nine Indian companies asking for details of how 20,000 H1-B visas were used, reveal that such visa holders were being paid an average salary of $52,312 as against $65,003 to locals.
The findings are part of the report prepared by software industry expert John Miano for CIS, an independent non-profit organisation.
The report noted that H1-B is often misused by employers to import cheaper labour -- apparently the key argument of US lawmakers Charles Grassley (Republican) and Richard Durbin (Democrat) for restricting the number of such visas.
The H1-B visa cap had already been reduced from 1,95,000 to 65,000 two years ago.
The two senators wrote to, among others, Infosys, TCS and Wipro and the episode kicked up a storm back home, where IT industry and even government officials reacted angrily.
Industry body Nasscom asked the senators not to confuse the H1-B visa with immigration, saying the programme was more to do with international trade.
The US lawmakers apparently feel that the H-1B visa programme is being abused by foreign companies to displace qualified American workers and details sought from the Indian companies is part of an exercise to identify any possible misuse of this temporary visa programme.
H-1B is a temporary visa programme that enables employers in the US to hire professional level foreign workers for a period of up to six years.
As per the US law, employers must pay H-1B workers either the same rate as other employees with similar skills or the 'prevailing wage' for that occupation and location, which ever is higher.
The CIS study highlights that despite the prevailing wage rate requirement, actual pay rates reported by the employers of H-1B workers were significantly lower than the American workers.
Wages for 85 per cent of the workers working on the visas were for less than the median US wage in the same occupations and state. Applications for 47 per cent of H-1B computer programming workers were for wages below even the prevailing wage claimed by their employers.
Very few workers earned high wages by US standards and application for only four per cent of H-1B workers were among the top 25 per cent of wages for US workers.
The report showed that 28 per cent of the H-IB visas have been issued to computer professionals while 14 per cent to those working in the field of education.
Other areas include management, health, administration, engineering and others accounting for six per cent, nine per cent, 13 per cent, 12 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.
Workers from India (36 per cent) and China (nine per cent) dominate the visa programme and before the temporary increases in the H-1B visa quota, nearly half of all the visas went to people born in India.
"The H-1B programme is used to import workers at the very bottom of the wage scale. The wide gap between wages for US workers and H-1B workers helps explain why industry demand for H-1B workers is so high," the report stated.
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