TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Clemens, Michael A.
        TI  - Immigrant-Native Wage Gaps and Immigration Tariffs: Examining the Case for an H-1B Visa Tax
        PY  - 2026/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18435
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18435
        AB  - The US government in 2025 imposed a $100,000 tax on each high-skill foreign worker entering with an H-1B work visa. The only public economic justification calculates the tax to offset an estimated wage penalty for H-1B workers relative to US natives. But this estimate suffers from substantial bias. Reexamining the same data shows that H-1B workers receive a modest wage premium relative to comparable natives, roughly 6% on average—inconsistent with any wage penalty—when using equivalent wage concepts and comparing workers of the same age, gender, education, and tenure, in the same occupation and local labor market. I trace most of the discrepancy to four methodological choices that inflate the prior estimate: 1) undisclosed imputation of missing data, 2) pooling of non-contemporaneous years, 3) a definition of local labor markets contradicting standard economic practice and US law, and 4) failure to consider H-1B workers' low job tenure. The remaining discrepancy arises from comparing incompatible wage concepts for H-1B versus native workers. Beyond measurement, the theory of public economics implies that a revenue-maximizing immigration tax reduces welfare relative to alternatives, even with zero weight on immigrant welfare.
        KW  - immigration
KW  - tax
KW  - h-1b
KW  - skill
KW  - stem
KW  - worker
KW  - labor
KW  - welfare
KW  - immigrant
KW  - nonimmigrant
KW  - visa
KW  - wages
KW  - gap
        ER  -