Joe Feise wrote:

Peter Duniho wrote on 1/29/2005 11:24:


Perhaps. However, finding a "good lawyer" is less than trivial, just
as finding a competent person in practically any profession is. Two
(maybe three, I forget) different lawyers had been hired (at different
times) to assist with the permanent resident application, but none
offered that advice.


I agree that there are way too many bad immigration lawyers out there. I
have experienced one or two of them myself...
That's when I decided to learn enough about this stuff to be able to
know if a lawyer is trying to BS me.

Regardless, in this case, it's my opinion that the prevailing wage
should have been evaluated in a different context. A non-profit
organization isn't going to pay the same pay scale as might be found
at a high-revenue commercial operation (like Microsoft, Apple, or
Sun...three big employers that hire technical editors), or a
for-profit periodical publication (say PC World or Windows Magazine,
or something like that).


And that isn't the case. The prevailing wage is determined by
metropolitan area. The prevailing wage for a specific job in, say, some
small town in the Midwest is less than the prevailing wage for that same
job in Silly Valley, or Seattle, or NYC. The cost of living is of course
lower in small towns as well.

Why should technical editing pay at a non-profit be compared to pay at
companies that are in a decidedly different business? Under this
interpretation of the rules, no non-profit organization can ever hire
a permanent resident applicant.


By the same logic, the non-profit organization wouldn't be able to hire
Americans, either, since they all would go to the companies who pay the
big bucks...

Only if you assume that people decide which company to work for based
purely on salary. Many non-profits pay less for equivalent work than
other companies because they can find people who want to work for them
and are willing to make do with less salary.

They simply cannot afford to compete with other employers that are
engaged in an entirely different business.


Non-profit does not necessarily mean that they can't afford to pay
competitive salaries...

But it frequently means they don't have to in order to attract employees
and can therefore take the money saved and apply it to their primary
mission. Someone who believes in the goals of say, Greenpeace, may
well be willing to work there even if they could make substantially more
elsewhere.

Non-profit or not, the rules apply to everybody. If a company, for
profit or non-profit, can't afford or is unwilling to pay the going rate
for a specific position in a specific area, they can't sponsor a
Greencard for that position.

But the rules aren't flexible enough to recognize substantial
differences in the non-monetary rewards of positions at different
types of employers which result in different salary scales even
though the job qualifications and responsibilities might be similar.