As immigrationgirl.com readers know, President Trump signed the Buy American and Hire American Executive Order in April, which seeks to create higher wages and employment rates for U.S. workers and to protect their economic interests by rigorously enforcing and administering our immigration laws. It also directs DHS, in coordination with other agencies, to advance policies to help ensure H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid beneficiaries.
As immigrationgirl.com readers know, President Trump signed the Buy American and Hire American Executive Order in April, which seeks to create higher wages and employment rates for U.S. workers and to protect their economic interests by rigorously enforcing and administering our immigration laws. It also directs DHS, in coordination with other agencies, to advance policies to help ensure H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid beneficiaries.
As a result, we have new data available about the use of the H-1B visa. USCIS has released a report of Approved H-1B Petitions by Employer for FY2016. The full report is 900 pages, but a quick look at the first few pages gives us some interesting insight.
I’ve reproduced some of the data below and listed some of the highest users of the H-1B visa program in order of average salary, from lowest to highest. You’ll also see what percentage of applicants for each company hold master’s degrees. To me, this shows that there are companies using the H-1B visa to truly hire the best and brightest so that they can drive innovation and add value to the U.S. economy. At the same time, there are companies paying much lower wages, feeding into the idea that the H-1B is being used in a way that depresses wages for American workers.
| Company | Total Number of Approved Petitions | Average Salary | Number with Master’s Degree | % with Master’s Degree |
| UST | 1,136 | $ 71,371 | 409 | 36% |
| Tata | 11,295 | $ 71,819 | 2221 | 20% |
| Mindtree | 1,103 | $ 73,691 | 299 | 27% |
| Wipro | 6,819 | $ 73,937 | 2521 | 37% |
| Hexaware | 711 | $ 76,408 | 186 | 26% |
| Tech Mahindra | 3,344 | $ 76,737 | 1133 | 34% |
| Mphasis | 1,016 | $ 81,750 | 301 | 30% |
| HCL | 3,492 | $ 83,980 | 1295 | 37% |
| Cognizant | 21,549 | $ 84,303 | 4919 | 23% |
| Infosys | 12,780 | $ 84,344 | 2759 | 22% |
| Ernst & Young | 1,552 | $ 96,316 | 988 | 64% |
| Intel | 1,873 | $ 101,025 | 1334 | 71% |
| Deloitte Consulting | 3,114 | $ 102,558 | 1044 | 34% |
| JP Morgan Chase | 1,467 | $ 111,469 | 736 | 50% |
| Amazon | 2,739 | $ 115,257 | 1840 | 67% |
| IBM | 1,006 | $ 115,745 | 600 | 60% |
| Walmart | 633 | $ 118,327 | 350 | 55% |
| Oracle | 1,448 | $ 118,507 | 874 | 60% |
| PWC | 757 | $ 119,186 | 474 | 63% |
| HP | 374 | $ 120,113 | 225 | 60% |
| Cisco | 1,529 | $ 121,372 | 924 | 60% |
| Microsoft | 3,556 | $ 126,096 | 1907 | 54% |
| Yahoo | 311 | $ 127,624 | 198 | 64% |
| Uber | 466 | $ 130,856 | 323 | 69% |
| 2,517 | $ 131,882 | 1535 | 61% | |
| Apple | 1,992 | $ 138,563 | 1134 | 57% |
| Ebay | 472 | $ 139,265 | 307 | 65% |
| 1,107 | $ 140,758 | 620 | 56% | |
| Bloomberg | 444 | $ 142,999 | 287 | 65% |
| 374 | $ 150,139 | 244 | 65% |
I expect the Trump administration will be relying heavily on this data to modify existing policies. The salary indicated in the H-1B petition is now being taken into consideration when USCIS officers are adjudicating pending cases. Petitions with lower salaries are seeing Requests for Evidence asking the sponsoring employers to prove that the job offered is actually a “specialty occupation” based on USCIS’ assumption that lower-wage positions are not very complex and may not require a Bachelor’s degree.