The H-1B Wage Gap, Visa Fees, and Employer Demand

George Borjas

No 34793, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The H-1B program lets firms hire high-skill foreign workers for a six-year term. The annual number of visas allocated to for-profit firms is capped at 85,000 and there is excess demand for those visas. The analysis merges administrative data, including the I- 129 petitions that report the wage offer made to specific H-1B beneficiaries, with the American Community Surveys. On average, H-1B workers earn 15 percent less than comparable natives, suggesting that firms may be willing to pay a one-time fee to obtain the visas. The data are examined using a labor demand model to simulate how a fee alters the hiring decision. For moderate levels of excess demand, the revenue maximizing fee ranges from $97,000 to $154,000 after allowing for unobserved productivity gains or costs associated with an H-1B hire, and for wage growth and job turnover in the H-1B workforce. The fee also changes the skill composition of that workforce, making it more skilled.

JEL-codes: J08 J18 J69 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34793.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34793

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34793
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().