Grading the math behind the H-1B fee

One exception to the generalized support for skilled immigration, however, is support for a specific visa, the H-1B, among US tech workers (see the previous link for some discussion). A recent analysis by George Borjas argued that H-1B workers were paid, on average, 16% less than comparable natives, which provided one argument for the new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas. However, a new analysis from the Economic Innovation Group argues this analysis did not actually compare like-for-like jobs: most importantly, Borjas’ sample of H-1B workers spans 2020-2023, while his sample of native workers wages comes from 2023. Even if H-1B and native-born workers were paid the same in each year, wage growth (via economic growth and inflation) would mean a sample of wages from 2023 would be higher than a sample from 2020-2023. When EIG compares only 2023 wages of H-1B workers to native born workers in that year, there is still a wage gap, but it falls to 7.5%; this falls even further when EIG makes some additional reasonable tweaks. Finally, they show that the wage gap varies considerably across workers: young workers with newly minted PhDs (for example) tend to be paid more than native born counterparts.