I'm not disagreeing with you, I was pointing out that there is a lot of effort put into gaming what exactly "market rate" means for any job. A lot of effort p

I'm not disagreeing with you, I was pointing out that there is a lot of effort put into gaming what exactly "market rate" means for any job. A lot of effort put into preventing workers from knowing what other workers make even outside of any government program; It's an adversarial negotiation. The rule that H1B workers get paid the prevailing wage is... quite difficult to verify or enforce. My own (completely anecdotal and subjective) experience is that the H1B workers I've known well enough to exchange salary data were either way better than me technically, or they were getting paid way less than I was. My impression is that foreigners (esp. foreigners from lower cost-of-living countries) get paid less for the same skill.