Prevailing Wage and H-1B

The Department of Labor (DOL) just penalized a Company in Atlanta (Smartsoft International Inc) one million dollars for not paying 135 of its H-1B employees the prevailing wage. In this blog I am NOT defending Smartsoft. If they promised the DOL that they would pay a certain amount to their employees, they should do it. And many Indian run companies operate as they do in India, abusing employees. They forget that employees here have recourse that they would not in India.

However this blog is about fairness where prevailing wage is concerned on the part of the DOL. They just came out with a new prevailing wage system, where most wages are higher than the previous prevailing wage. We are in the midst of a recession, the rate of employment now is higher than it has been in at least a decade. Soon deflation is going to be the reality in the USA, but not in the world of the DOL's Prevailing Wage. Thus if Smartsoft was paying its H-1B workers the same as their other US Citizen workers,(and I don't know if they were or not) would that be a crime? After all isn't Prevailing Wage the Wage that is "prevalent" at a particular place? And why would an employer pay more when there are 50 people who will do the same job for less?

I think the US has realized that they have a cash cow in employment based immigration. H-1B and L-1 fees for certain Companies (mainly Indian Computer based companies) were raised to pay for US border security. Companies don't have compelling stories, and the democrats don't like them. But these small companies will simply outsource the jobs to India. And can the US afford a retaliatory price increase if the Indian Government wishes to implement that to secure its borders as well?

For more information contact Houston Immigration Lawyer or Houston Immigration Attorney, Annie Banerjee