I&#x27;m not disagreeing with you, I was pointing out that there is a lot of effort put into gaming what exactly &quot;market rate&quot; 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&#x27;s an adversarial negotiation.<p>The rule that H1B workers get paid the prevailing wage is... quite difficult to verify or enforce.<p>My own (completely anecdotal and subjective) experience is that the H1B workers I&#x27;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.