Apple H-1B workers average $139,000 in pay

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

Opponents of the tech industry’s beloved H-1B visas for skilled workers have long argued that outsourcing companies abuse the program, gobbling up the lion’s share of visas to provide cheaper foreign labor to U.S. companies.

Now they have new ammunition, thanks to an executive order from President Donald Trump.

The federal government has released data showing that while Apple, Google, Amazon and others pay H-1B workers relatively well, outsourcers haul in the vast majority of visas and pay the workers much less, according to a new report. One outsourcing company took more than 21,000 visas, nearly three times the number taken by Apple, Google and Amazon combined.

The H-1B has become a flash point in the immigration debate. Revelations about U.S. workers having to train their outsourced replacements before being laid off, including at UC San Francisco, have added fuel to the fire.

Imagine that.