In an excellent article by Walter Ewing with American Immigration Council, Mr. Ewing explains why the current system of determining the “prevailing wage” for visa applications is flawed:
The bottom line is that the current system for determining the prevailing wage of a worker in a particular occupation and industry, with a given amount of experience and education, and in a specific locale, is not precise enough to serve its purpose: ensure that neither U.S. or foreign workers are unfairly disadvantaged in the labor market. For employment visas such as the H-1B to yield the maximum benefit to the U.S. economy as a whole, by supplementing rather than supplanting U.S. workers, then the appropriate pay scales must be calculated as accurately as possible.
Ann Massey Badmus 