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US Law Allows Low H-1B Wages; Just Look At Apple (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: If you work at Apple's One Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino as a computer programmer on an H-1B visa, you can can be paid as little as $52,229. That's peanuts in Silicon Valley. Average wages for a programmer in Santa Clara County are more than $93,000 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the U.S. government will approve visa applications for Silicon Valley programmers at $52,229 -- and, in fact, did so for hundreds of potential visa holders at Apple alone. To be clear, this doesn't mean there are hundreds of programmers at Apple working for that paltry sum. Apple submitted a form to the U.S. saying it was planning on hiring 150 computer programmers beginning June 14 at this wage. But it's not doing that. Instead, this is a paperwork exercise by immigration attorneys to give an employer -- in this case, Apple -- maximum latitude with the H-1B laws. The forms-submittal process doesn't always reflect actual hiring goals or wage levels. Apple didn't want to comment for the story, but it did confirm some things. It says it hires on the basis on qualifications and that all employees -- visa holders and U.S. workers alike -- are paid equitably and it conducts internal studies to back this up. There are bonuses on top of base pay. Apple may not be paying low wages to H-1B workers, but it can pay low wages to visa workers if it wanted. This fact is at the heart of the H-1B battle.
I made ~$55K last year with an extra month of pay as a Christmas bonus in IT Support. I'm not surprised. Fortune 500 companies don't want to pay top dollar for talent anymore.
Trump is, and always was, what he claimed Clinton to be, except 100 times worse. I'd like to think the people who voted for him realize this by now, but they're still convinced emailgate and Benghazi were real scandals, and probably still think the Clintons murdered Vince Foster, so they'll never see it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.