An Independent Investigation

The talent shortage
is a myth.

This is labor arbitrage.

Six of the biggest corporations in America filed 261,993 Labor Condition Applications for foreign workers. Public records expose the playbook: file at scale, pay the legal minimum, and lock workers in with green card sponsorship.

Total LCA Filings261,993
|
Approval Rate97-99%
|
Green Card Sponsors30,471
|
Amazon PERM Filings25,462
|
Commodity IT Roles61%+
|
Companies Tracked6
|
Years of DataFY2017-2026
|
Total LCA Filings261,993
|
Approval Rate97-99%
|
Green Card Sponsors30,471
|
Amazon PERM Filings25,462
|
Commodity IT Roles61%+
|
Companies Tracked6
|
Years of DataFY2017-2026
|

The Numbers

What the public records show.

Every data point here comes from federal filings these companies made themselves - the same data they hope nobody reads.

261,993
Total LCA Filings
FY2017-2025, six companies
30,471
Green Card Sponsorships
PERM applications filed
61%+
Commodity IT Work
Software devs, analysts, QA - not specialized talent
97-99%
USCIS Approval Rate
Rubber stamp. Virtually zero oversight.
25,462
Amazon PERM Filings
Green card apps from one company alone - 8x more than the next
23,619
Amazon Peak H-1B Approvals
FY2022 - more than every bank in this dataset combined

The Playbook

The talent shortage is a myth.
This is labor arbitrage.

01

File at Scale

Thousands of Labor Condition Applications filed per year. Volume is the strategy.

02

Pay the Floor

Nearly a third of filings cluster right at the prevailing wage minimum. Compliance minimums, not competitive offers.

03

Route to Low-Cost Cities

Workers sent to locations where prevailing wage obligations are lowest. Geographic arbitrage baked into the system.

04

Lock Them In

Sponsor green cards. The worker can't leave, can't negotiate, can't push back. Their immigration status is the leash.

Methodology

All sourced. All public.

This entire investigation runs on public federal data - filings these companies submitted to the Department of Labor, USCIS, the SEC, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

They created the paper trail. We read it.

DOL
Dept. of Labor OFLC
Every LCA filing, prevailing wage determination, and worksite location.
USCIS
USCIS Employer Data Hub
H-1B petition approvals, denials, and outcomes by employer and fiscal year.
SEC
SEC 10-K Filings
Annual workforce headcounts - the denominator for calculating H-1B penetration.
BLS
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Occupational wage data to benchmark what the market actually pays.

Note: LCA filings are not the same as H-1B petitions. One worker can have multiple LCAs across different years or locations. The data shows filing volume and patterns - which is exactly the point. The pattern is the story.

Stay Informed

This is just
the beginning.

New research published weekly. More companies, more industries, more data to go through.