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Comment by scient | Hacker News Reader

There actually is a salary condition in the requirements. In order to apply for the visa, the company needs to submit a job description along with the salary to the DOL, who then either approves or denies it. The salary for the position has to be above average for the position in the US. Yet this does not seem to stop any of these companies.

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The article describes a loophole by which companies like Tata can pay their H1B workers anything north of $60,000 instead of market rate for the position.

$60k sounds fine, it just should have been indexed to CPI back when the law was passed (I think in 1994?)

http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=019f28cb2b081515d27...

In 1994 dollars, that's about $96k.

I wish that they had more detail on that "loophole" - every H-1B application I've seen has to meet the prevailing wage determination for the place where the person will be employed. Perhaps they use a rural location.

Fudging job duties is what I'm use to.

They will have job duties broken down for the lowest paying position, with a 5% other work, but on the job they will be doing work of a better paid position, with that 5% other work constituting 90% of what they are doing.

Which is not actually a loophole, it's illegal. If a job is substantially different from what it was supposed to be, you're supposed to get it reclassified.

Illegal actions become a loophole when the means of enforcing the law is far too weak to catch most attempts at breaking them.

Imagine if the only punishment for theft was having to pay back 200% of what you stole. As long as you don't get caught half the time, it is profitable to steal. That would be both something which is illegal and also a loop hole in the law.

Sure, I understand that lack of enforcement is the issue, but technically that is not a loophole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loophole :

"In a loophole, a law addressing a certain issue exists, but the law can be legally circumvented due to a technical defect in the said law"

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