"My point was that the wage distortion caused by top-tier companies hiring employees on H-1B is small to nil." I'm really not sure that's true. Even at top ti

"My point was that the wage distortion caused by top-tier companies hiring employees on H-1B is small to nil." I'm really not sure that's true. Even at top tier employers with high salaries. What I'm trying to get at, with my comment above, is that no insidious intent needs to be present for the wage distortion to occur. It's difficult to know how the market would behave at the upper end in the absence of education and work specific visas. It's also difficult to make comparisons, since all fields are somewhat different. However, I would say that getting hired by google is tough, and is an indication that you are working at the upper percentiles of the market. What is a typical salary for a graduate degree holder at the SSE level at a place like Google? Is that reflect of the 90%ile salary at other fields? Truth is, these salaries are still considerably lower that you'd find for JD, MD, MBA holder at a comparable percentile level. If silicon valley employers couldn't rely on a visa to essentially coerce large numbers of would-be immigrants into studying CS/Related fields and working as software developers as a condition for moving to and working in the US, what would the labor market look like? I personally feel that CS, Math, Engineering fields are very, very rigorous with high attrition rates relative to other academic fields. People don't drop out of Poly Sci because it's too tough and decide to major in Physics because it's easier. Admission to top graduate schools is very selective, and attrition rates are high. PhD programs often have 50% attrition rates at top schools, whereas attrition rates at top JD or MD programs are generally below 0.5% (yes, that's correct, less than one half of one percent). Even MS programs (there's less data on this) appear to have attrition rates of 25% or so, still two orders of magnitude higher. Imagine if silicon valley employers had to convince top students that they should pick a STEM graduate degree and job as a developer at google instead of an MBA or JD or MD? That all people, immigrants and citizens, had that choice? Honestly, I do think the landscape would look very very different. I think salaries and working conditions would be far higher than they are right now. You may have heard of the RAND research institute - they essentially reached this conclusion: "Other approaches such as making K-12 science and math courses more interesting and pushing for more qualified math and science teachers "may have merit in their own right," researchers said, "but we think they pale in importance to the earnings and attractiveness of S&E careers as major determinants of the supply of U.S.-born students to S&E." Here's a link to the full study. http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html In short: salaries and career prospects in STEM really aren't competitive with the other options highly talented people can pursue - provided they are free to pursue them!.