Fixing Prevailing Wage Calculations for High-Skilled Immigrants

The system for determining the prevailing wage for H-1B and employment based green card requests is deeply flawed, based on data not meant for this purpose and using a formula devised by Congress. The current administration and Congress have proposed using prevailing wage levels as a way to prioritize which foreign nationals receive consideration of H-1B petitions filed on their behalf when the annual cap is reached (in place of the current system that uses a lottery). The problem with such an approach is it results in Congress requiring employers to pay foreign nationals more favorable wages than their similarly situated U.S. worker counterparts, mandating wages for foreign nationals dramatically above market rates, or inserting the federal government in the hiring processes of private sector employers that are engaging in the normal recruiting and selection of professionals in the U.S. labor market to fill jobs to be performed in the United States. 

The solution to achieving increased accuracy of the wage rates calculated by Office of Foreign Labor Certification for immigration purposes based on the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey is to combine the far-reaching data collection of the OES survey with certain data from private, independently published compensation surveys. This would provide all parties involved with more accurate prevailing wage determinations that rely on real world conditions, rather than contrived formulas mandated by Congress. 

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