H-1B Willful Violator List of Employers

https://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/H1Bwillfulviolator.htm

by griff1986 • 10 years ago

154 163 10 years ago

And what does this Wall of Shame actually do? Shouldn't the Department of Labor be able to fine them or something rather than just publishing their names?

maxerickson• 10 years ago

There's a link to some of the consequences:

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/FactSheet62/whdfs62S...

pm90• 10 years ago

It might be as a way to alert possible future employees.

sokoloff• 10 years ago

Yes, the H1B prospects will no doubt use their incredible market position and bargaining power to avoid these employers.

dyladan• 10 years ago

This seems like an exceedingly small list

lighttower• 10 years ago

Yes extremely short. And why all those East Asian names?

discardorama• 10 years ago

Or, a list of those who couldn't afford the right lawyers.

ConfuciusSay026• 10 years ago

I recommend Cohen & Grigsby.

They'll be happy to show you exactly how to run fake job ads locally in order to exclude American workers, then they'll show you how to use the various loopholes to get around what flimsy regulations exist, in order to get yourself a bunch of low wage immigrant employees who live in fear of losing their job and being sent back home.

See for yourself here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

awinder• 10 years ago

"Prince George's County Public Schools"

Interesting to find one public school system on the list, out of the entire country (not that I had any expectations on who should be on the list, just that 1 school system out of 13K school districts in the entire country)

gypsy_boots• 10 years ago

PG County school district shares a border with Washington, DC, which may be a reason why it got caught and other schools haven't yet. By that I mean, other schools may in fact be in violation, but investigators (who are likely in DC) heard about the practices going on right next door.

dudifordMann• 10 years ago

Looks like this was the reason for the 2011 violation:

http://www.today.com/id/44708445/ns/today-today_news/t/forei...

with the court ruling of:

http://h1blegalrights.com/2011/07/md-countys-public-schools-...

pcr0• 10 years ago

Link seems to be down?

kinofcain• 10 years ago

None of the largest body shops being present on the list is sad. The H-1B program is all too clearly abused by large "consulting" firms to drive down wages and mistreat visa holding employees under the threat of deportation.

dccoolgai5• 10 years ago

I've often wondered - I know there are requirements for them to "post" those openings before they get the visa - if there is a way for "concerned citizens" to challenge them through the department of labor or something... we could make a website that would let professional engineers volunteer their spare time go down the list of WiPro's (or whatever the big offender companies are) visa requests and call BS on them.

dccoolgai5• 10 years ago

What a joke! This is what it says on the Dept. of Labor site:

Who enforces the requirement for offering jobs to qualified U.S. applicants? Questions or complaints concerning any non-selection should be referred to the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC), which also administers several statutes concerning employment discrimination based on national origin, citizenship status, and immigration document abuse. OSC may be contacted at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Wahington, DC 20530, 1-800-255-7688 and http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/osc/.

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/osc/ == "PAGE NOT FOUND"

Fuck this.

mynameisvlad4• 10 years ago

They just have to post it at their place of business, so the public wouldn't have access to them. This is unlike the EB3 process where a job posting has to be made public as part of PERM.

stale2002• 10 years ago

That wouldn't work.

I'm sure these companies would be more than happy to hire an American who responds to their job request if that American was willing to work for 50k.

ConfuciusSay026• 10 years ago

Maybe the crooked law firms who facilitate everything deserve some scrutiny here too.

Case in point: How to post fake job ads to shirk the visa rules, courtesy of Cohen & Grigsby. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

x5n1• 10 years ago

It's not sad it represents the political reality of employment in the US. It basically shows that these people don't spent any or enough money lobbying the government and is a wake up call for them to become more politically involved.

mc32• 10 years ago

Probably because the large ones can follow the letter of the law. The smaller shops are probably the ones which are rally sloppy with their work. Just turning in paperwork has worked in the past and so they feel it will work again -- just procedural but sloppy, is my guess.

I guess if people are really bothered by a few unscrupulous employers abusing the system, there is nothing preventing someone from building an app to shame or report the employers to authorities who could fine these places. Maybe cut a deal to get a slice of the fine for every good lead. Gamify it so those who produce credible leads are weighted over those who want to cry wolf or are on a vendetta, etc.

GreaterFool3• 10 years ago

Well, this list is "willful violators". I'm pretty sure the body shops that "abuse" the system are well within the letter of the law. I don't approve of what they do, but if it's legal then it's legal. Blame the politicians, blame the government. If you don't like it, change the law, change the system. As long as it's legal and a profitable business they will keep on doing what they're doing.

kehrlann• 10 years ago

Mmmh, not being familiar with US immigration laws, I'm not sure I get everything. Is this about companies who illegally "import" foreign workers when they could have recruited US citizens ?

spriggan3• 10 years ago

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/FactSheet62/whdfs62S...

ProAm3• 10 years ago

I think if you use H-1B for your company you should be denied from using any tax breaks when filing US taxes.

btreesOfSpring• 10 years ago

that seems like a very general rule for something that might have greater subtlety than, "lower pay for an non-citizen employee." curious about your rational here.

bgribble3• 10 years ago

The US is a nation of immigrants. As it stands now, H1-B is one of the few paths for technically-educated people to get lawful work and eventual permanent residence and citizenship in the US.

I don't think there's anything wrong with sponsoring an H1-B for a talented and qualified person who wants to live in the US. There's room, and there are jobs, and complaining about immigrants is just stupid.

That said, the H1-B gives companies way too much leverage over their workers. In a "restructuring" of my former employer (aka entering the drain-spiral) , the NYC office was closed and most people were offered the "opportunity" to relocate to Sacramento, or take severance. Not a single person relocated.... except the lone H1-B, who had a new baby and didn't feel like he had any choice because he could lose his visa otherwise. That kind of coercive force is a sign of a broken power dynamic, due to a broken law.

ProAm3• 10 years ago

I completely agree, but it's having your cake and eating it too. I'm in full support of H-1B, but you shouldn't be allowed cheaper labor and also not pay taxes. I'd like to see one or the other, pay taxes and have lower labor, or employee Americans and get tax breaks.

tosseraccount• 10 years ago

nation of immigrants

Technically, most Americans were born in America.

Lawtonfogle• 10 years ago

That said, the H1-B gives companies way too much leverage over their workers.

Which is why they need to be done away with. If we still want the talent (and why shouldn't we, brain fill is good), we need a way for them to enter which does not tie them to an employer.

dudul4• 10 years ago

An H1-B is not a path to permanent residence. Having an H1-B does not help in any way with getting a green card. If you apply through employment the sponsoring company does not get any fee reduction, the application is not processed any faster. This is a completely independent petition.

The only way you could say an H1B is a path to immigration is for the case where a non-immigrant meets a spouse and get a green card through marriage. That's what happened to me, but this is really just by accident. Someone under a student visa could experience the same outcome for example.

You sait it yourself, the power of companies over H1Bs is overwhelming. Upon termination, an H1B has to leave the country in the following 24 hours, there is no "grace period" even though it's a widespread myth.

falsestprophet• 10 years ago

"US is a nation of immigrants"

The US is a nation full stop and we can write whatever laws we please without regard to when people arrived here in the first place.

Are Madagascar, Mauritius and Haiti also disallowed from having immigration restrictions because they were also populated in the Modern era?

coherentpony• 10 years ago

Disney is not on the list?

matheweis• 10 years ago

My first thought too; where is Disney and/or TATA

cwilkes2• 10 years ago

maybe they don't directly employee the H1b holder instead going through a consulting shop.

roughfalls• 10 years ago

As a former employee of Disney, I can confirm that this is correct. Disney IT goes through firms such as HCL and Cognizant who act as the H1-B sponsors. I'm aware of a very small number of examples where Disney sponsored H1-B visas directly, but those folks worked outside of IT and they did not displace any existing employees.

anon987• 10 years ago

On a related note, the FBI recently uncovered a $20m H1B fraud operations http://www.computerworld.com/article/3064712/h1b/us-uncovers...

beeboop• 10 years ago

An obvious solution to this I've heard of before is to make the minimum salary for H-1B workers to be very high. Over six figures. If the talent is really so rare and difficult that you can't get it in the US, surely that talent is worth spending more money on. Any reason this would be unfair?

easytiger• 10 years ago

Or at least apply the same limits as other forms of immigration

6stringmerc• 10 years ago

I don't see it as unfair; I'd almost assert that to stay within compliance of the process the applying company must show proof that one or more US Citizens were offered the job and are willing to attest that the salary is market competitive. Essentially I don't think the program is very well policed / regulated.

ones_and_zeros3• 10 years ago

Yes, because that minimum would be lobbied and lobbied to be eroded away. It's a lever for the government to pull at their whim, much like they are doing with the H-1B end run program, OPT.

akavi• 10 years ago

Why not "auction" them? Ie, allocate them to the positions companies are willing to pay the most for in descending order.

You'd have to require that the company keep that salary in place for some number of years to prevent abuse, but that seems reasonable enough.

ones_and_zeros3• 10 years ago

How far down does "descending" go? It'd be a race to the bottom.

thingylab• 10 years ago

It's called a tariff. They're an incredibly blunt tool and they're generally not a good way to make anything "fair".

Also the rarity of a skill does not necessarily correlate to its economic output. So you would reduce the supply of workers for an arbitrary number of industries where wages are not higher than that number you just pulled out of a hat.

dominotw• 10 years ago

This has been discussed ad infinitum

eg:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11188243

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11224910

CyanLite2• 10 years ago

I didn't see Tata, Infosys, Disney, or Edison Electric anywhere on that list. Did I miss something?

geodel• 10 years ago

Yeah, you missed that rich and powerful are not really required to face consequences of their actions.

jonwachob91• 10 years ago

We'll see. Two of the victims from Disney's fiasco last year just filled a law suit - http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-disney-h1b-visa-l...

Hopefully the outcome from this lawsuit will hurt more then a flick on the nose...

anonte• 10 years ago

There are many Indian consulting/vendor shops out there that flout many H1B rules. 1. They take H1B filing fee from employee. 2. They keep you on bench. if you have no job, the consulting firm will run a dummy payroll for you to maintain legal visa status and you have to pay back payroll taxes to them to make up for their loss. 3. Most of the time they will not have a job before hand as required by H1B programme. They will hire some one, keep them on payroll(point 2 above) and then start the search for a contractor work from their clients.

There is lot of fraud going on there. I would say about 50% of H1B visas go to these scams. Ask any Indians working on big companies and they can explain you the bigger picture. Its pathetic that DHS/USCIS are unaware of these widespread scams.

titomc2• 10 years ago

Here is the big picture.

Path 1 - worker outside US.

  1. Worker outside US gets in touch with body shops in US. 
  2. The body shops forces the worker to fake their work  experience, take money and apply H1B. 
  3. If it gets thru lottery,the worker lands in US. 
  4. The body shop provides cheap accommodation for the worker.
  5. The body shop runs fake payrolls. 
  6. The workers finds a contract job by faking skills and doing proxy interviews, lip syncs on video interview calls. 
  7. Gets the contract job. 
  8. Gets fired when the employer realises that the worker is fake.
  9. Goto step 5.
 10. In parallel , the body shop will start GC process and the fake worker becomes Green Card holder and finally a citizen.

Path 2 - Foreign students comes for MS in US

  1. Many students comes to US to do master's degree after their bachelors. 
   (especially people from a particular state from India,I do not want to mention the state)
  2. Finishes masters ( 2 years ). Gets an OPT work permit for 2 years.
  3. The body shops recruit these students with nil experience.
  4. Fake up their work experience to say 5 - 6 years.
  5. Runs fake payroll when they are job hunting.
  6. Send these students to work as a contractor and applies H1B for them. Since they have an MS degree , the odds are high for them to get selected in the lottery.
  7. These fake workers outsource their office job to India at night and get it done from an experienced worker for a small amount.
  8. At some point , the employer understands the worker is fake,fires the contractor.
  9. Goto step 5.
  10. In parallel,the body shop will apply for GC in EB2 category and the fake workers becomes a Green card holder within 7 years and eventually a citizen.

tptacek• 10 years ago

The obvious problem here is that the real beneficiaries of H1B abuse are companies our parents have heard of, but the named violators are the 1099 body shops they source from, who nobody has heard of.

dennisgorelik• 10 years ago

Good point.

I was always thinking about how bodyshops benefits from Microsoft/Google/etc. lobbying in favor of H1b.

But you are right - bodyshops return the favor back to these tech giants by placing these contractors there.

halflings• 10 years ago

A lot of consultancy firms abuse this system, BUT: not all H1Bs are "cheap labor". If you are not American and want to work in a tech company in the US, you don't have much choice: 99% of the time, you have to get an H-1B.

I once got a position in a very interesting startup in Palo Alto (with a salary significantly above average in the region), and the company was thrilled to have me join them (because there really is a shortage of candidates in my field)... until we learned that I didn't get my H-1B.

It's a lottery, the most stupid way to pick who gets to enter you country. American tech companies are so frustrated with this system that they often build offices in Europe just to be able to recruit local talent. Many companies moved to Canada because the immigration law is more flexible there.

It baffles me that some people believe most non-American employees are just "cheap labor". There are smart people on the other side of the pond as well!

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 10 years ago

The way to fix this and to make sure that the H1-B is used for its intended purpose (to bring in extraordinary talent that is not present in the US) and not just for cheap labor, is instead of a lottery, to give it based on salary. The position that offers the highest salary gets an H1-B visa, then the next highest and so on until the quota of H1-B visas is used up.

How much a company is willing to pay is probably the best indication of the supply and demand for the talent.

ones_and_zeros3• 10 years ago

Who sets the quota? And how do we ensure the quota isn't lobbied to be resized to the point where it allows cheap labor?

LukaAl2• 10 years ago

No, the Visa you are referring to is the O-1 Visa, it is much more difficult and expensive to obtain, but it is not subject to Visa CAP (I know it well, I'm on O-1). H-1B is for specialty worker, and they are not defined by exceptionality but by the fact that they possess a qualification for a specific job, there's a shortage of US Citizen for that job, and they receive market rate salary.

We could agree that the behavior of consulting companies like Tata or Infosys seems like cheating (basically, send thousands of application hoping that a good percentage succeed). But they are hiring for positions that require a degree people qualified; it is difficult to hire for that kind of position (primarily because you could make more money with the same qualification in different companies); and they are paying market rate salaries (or at least, that's what it is certified!).

I could agree that the current H-1B Visa system is broken, but I'm not sure that fixing it just for the perspective of highly paid Silicon Valley Bro is the best solution for the US as a whole. What I'm saying is: are we sure that this kind of cheap specialty labor is not useful for the US society as a whole? E.g.: are we sure that, if System Integration companies have to pay engineers a much higher salary, they will be able to provide prices low enough for other company to pay it? And if few companies could pay for their services, this wouldn't impact their efficiency on one side and the B2B software market on the other side?

I'm not defending the violators nor supporting the "cheap H1B" practices. Just saying that the world is a little bit more complex than that.

serge2k5• 10 years ago

to bring in extraordinary talent that is not present in the US

I don't think that is the standard.

eli_gottlieb3• 10 years ago

Not all H1-B's are cheap labor, but the plurality are. We all know how to fix the system (auction the visas by salary), but the abusers block the political will, as does the fact that Congress believes in cheap labor as a principle.

GreaterFool3• 10 years ago

There's a trivial fix to the whole system: free the employees. As long as employees are completely tied to their employer wages will be lower. What else do you expect?

Forcing employers to pay a higher salary is a half-measure. I imagine they'd still prefer H1B's over locals for one simple reasons: you hire a H1B employee and they're gonna stick around for a few years. Even if the job sucks. It's worth to pay a bit more and significantly reduce turnover.

I'd love to see actual turnover stats of H1B employees versus American employees. I think it's a huge driving factor in hiring decisions, especially at giants like Facebook or Google.

supercanuck• 10 years ago

It baffles me that some people believe most non-American employees are just "cheap labor".

It is not a "belief" because they are cheaper. Everytime this topic comes up, a bunch of Ph.D's are shocked, SHOCKED! to learn that there are companies abusing the system and to learn that Infosys, Wipro and Tata are the leading H1-B Sponsors with an average salary of ~$73,000

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx

khare_ashwini2• 10 years ago

Even $73,000 is high end if you include all outsourcing firms. Here's some writeup I did which compared silicon valley tech firms v/s outsourcing firms: http://ashwinikhare.in/tech-firms-guest-visa/

RealGeek2• 10 years ago

Most of the abusers of H-1B are such body shops and consultants. A simple solution is to disallow consultants from sponsoring H-1B. Only the direct employer should be able to sponsor H-1B.

One of my friend was recruited by Tata in India, and then sent to work for Citibank in US. His visa was sponsored by Tata, he gets his paycheck from Tata ($72,000), but he works for Citibank in their office. Citibank pays Tata more than the market salary, and Tata's business model is arbitrage. Citibank could directly hire him at market salary and cut off the middle men.

They are not just abusing H-1B, but L1 visa too.

surds• 10 years ago

I have worked at one of the above mentioned companies and I have seen that A LOT of people would be interested in getting to work here at ~73000, which might be lesser than average but works fine for them.

Also, they probably have several other considerations in this matter: - Get the work experience of working in a different country at a client location that means more responsibility, more learning, etc. - Get the option to travel and explore another country, and the job salary covers for the expenses.

Now, usually, the role and responsibilities are that of a technical or functional consultant. But they are not an individual employed directly by the US company. Their employer, one of the above mentioned companies or one of the several ones out there, is contracted.

Note that I haven't worked here in US at any company while being an employee of a consultancy.

I believe that the US based company where the individual works might be charged at a higher hourly rate but only a certain percentage of it makes to the employee and thus they may have lesser salaries. I would love to have this belief clarified, if anyone has any input.

All that being said, I agree that the abuse of H1-B sucks. Though it is all too common outside the bay area. Haven't come across any instances here yet.

serge2k5• 10 years ago

I think the just part is important.

mcnawoh• 10 years ago

As an H-1B worker in Palo Alto (who also had to struggle through the ridiculous immigration process for almost two years), I'm being treated extremely well by my employer. They went out of their way to get me through the long-winded and expensive H-1B application process. I get compensated well, and I'm treated as any other valued employee.

While I recognize that a lot of ambitious and driven engineers from abroad have a similar experience to mine in the Bay Area, I'm also not blind to the fact that our situation is simply not representative of the typical H-1B worker.

The incentive structures surrounding the immigration process are not set up to effectively prevent abuse and exploitation of cheap labor. "Importing" desperate and often undereducated workers is cost-effective enough to happen at a fairly uncomfortable scale, to the detriment of the workers themselves and the industry as a whole.

Immigration is obviously complex for a whole host of reasons, and there's a lot of countries that struggle with (or outright abuse) that process. Of course, H-1B engineers in the U.S. are nowhere near as mistreated as migrant workers in many other nations — including wealthy ones — but it's still a commonly exploited system here. Those of us who have a relatively dignified experience in this mess are not near the middle of the curve.

I'm not familiar enough to know which nations get it "right", if any, but there certainly are lessons to be learned by looking elsewhere.

chrisper• 10 years ago

So, what did you do then? Working in Europe?

I was considering doing the H1B route, but decided to not to bother. Probably, will just go back to Europe and work there.

xen2xen1• 10 years ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-c... Disney laid off their Disneyland I.T. staff and forced them to train immigrants beforehand. Stories like this is what unnerves so many people and causes the backlash. Ignore it at your peril. Before this I would have agreed with you. After...

civilian• 10 years ago

A company ought to be able to choose who they employ. What makes Americans more deserving of an I.T. job than a team in India?

You're not thinking like a global citizen.

1024core4• 10 years ago

It's a lottery, the most stupid way to pick who gets to enter you country.

Instead of a random lottery, rank the applications by salary (decreasing order) and take the top N. Everyone wins: company has to pay more, it ensures that the visas go to really hard-to-fill jobs, and workers get more.

ecnal• 10 years ago

Alternately, remove the need for highly skilled workers to get visas entirely, thereby completely preventing companies from abusing the system.

serge2k5• 10 years ago

No, big Silicon valley tech companies win.

LeifCarrotson• 10 years ago

Well, Infosys, Wipro and Tata would lose in that scheme. Whether they ought to win or not isn't a matter of debate here, but it is important to a lot of people.

anpk• 10 years ago

Someone in texas would definitely lose out because their salary will be much much lower than the bay area.

This doesn't factor in cost of living.

RealGeek2• 10 years ago

Tens of thousands of foreign students come to US every year for education, majority of them are among the top of talent pool. They have to be top performers in their country to be able to get university admission and visa to come to US.

After they graduate, if they want to stay and work in US; their only option is H-1B. Even they are subjected to the stupid lottery system.

khare_ashwini2• 10 years ago

99% of the time, you have to get an H-1B.

Not if you are a citizen of:

Canada : TN

Singapore, Chile : H1-B1

Australia : E-3

Thanks to trade agreements

jensvdh• 10 years ago

I wish Europe had a trade agreement with the US like this :(

wrsh07• 10 years ago

Not that this is a good excuse, but for some Americans, their primary contact with immigrants is news about those coming up from the southern border.

I learned a lot more about immigration law after starting at a bigger tech company where a lot of my colleagues are immigrants.

serge2k5• 10 years ago

It's especially bad when a lot of the reason for lotteries every year is shitty consulting companies flooding applications. Then they use the H-1B workers they get to help them displace American workers.

Meanwhile people who are just trying to legitimately immigrate to the US and join the workforce without really displacing anyone get to hear about how they are shitty underpaid foreigners who are hurting America with their H-1B visas.

PopsiclePete• 10 years ago

Former H-B myself. I was actually the most expensive member on the team. All 3 devs had the same base salary and bonus structure but they had to cover immigration lawyer fees for me on top of everything else.

In general, Americans' view on immigration is extremely skewed. Most people I've spoken to are surprised I'm not a citizen and are even more baffled to learn how little sympathy I have for illegal immigrants, since to them, all immigrants are "illegal", there must be no other way to get into this country!

Few know what a Green Card is, or what an H1B is, or what other pathways there are for living here - they just assume that I must already be American, since all immigrants are poor abused people from south of the border, and I don't look the part.

known• 10 years ago

I've a better list http://sammyboy.com/showthread.php?98021-Companies-ruined-or...

_of• 10 years ago

The H1B visa requires a minimum pay as it is right now. However, what some companies do when they sponsor a foreign worker for H1B is to hire the person part time on paper and thus being able to pay a lower wage, but still in practice requiring him or her to work full time. This is an anecdote I heard but I know it occurs. For many people, having the chance to come to the U.S. is like winning the lottery, and they will not report their employer.

preetbhinder2• 10 years ago

They do have a prevailing wage clause but if you look up labor filings by most tech companies the wages are on average MUCH lower than what Americans would expect. I just saw a software developer petition for a company in San Francisco for 79K.

durandal1• 10 years ago

Though it does not take RSUs into account, and in the SF/SV a huge chunk of the compensation tend to come in the form of RSUs.

Overtonwindow• 10 years ago

Something is wrong with this list.... Where's Facebook, Google, Disney, Microsoft, and all of the other major corporations that have systematically undermined and cheated the American workforce by importing cheap labor, and then laying off the fully qualified, educated, and trained Americans?

Manishearth• 10 years ago

Don't know about Disney, but the tech companies pay exactly the same for hires at the same level regardless of where they are originally from.

H1B may have the benefit of being somewhat bonded labor for them, but its not cheap.

ConfuciusSay026• 10 years ago

It also, in aggregate, has the effect of lowering, or preventing increases in, wages in the larger labor market.

BuckRogers2• 10 years ago

I see one from my home state of Iowa. Worldwide Software Services, Inc. As a proud native-born, raised and college educated Iowan that had to leave to Chicago and Austin to find work, I will taking extra time to harass and shame them. Companies like this are part of the reason why we can't find jobs and have to migrate like cattle for them.

A good example where mob rule will be a good thing. I have my pitchfork ready.

Thank you for this link.

oneplane2• 10 years ago

Why can't you live off of the same salary as the 'cheap' workers? Sounds to me that you think you are entitled to something...

ConfuciusSay026• 10 years ago

So it's entitlement to want to exercise the democratic process to push for policies that won't decrease wages wholesale? Are you against the democratic process?

BuckRogers2• 10 years ago

Are you entitled to jobs in my country? Get a job whatever 3rd world wasteland you're from. Yes I am entitled to jobs in my own country.

oneplane2• 10 years ago

Why does that website look like it's straight out of 1995? It's a government website, isn't it? Shouldn't it look more modern and professional?

throwaway102938• 10 years ago

I worked in a US Embassy consular section as a summer hire working with H1B visas. Part of my job was to check that the companies were real. I was amazed how many were fraudulent, even companies where we already had the DHS paperwork to issue the visa. When I say fraudulent, I mean the addresses and phone numbers for the company simply did not belong to any company. They were incredibly transparent fronts for illegal immigration.

mseebach2• 10 years ago

It seems that opposition to H-1Bs is pretty widespread here. Do most people of this position also support deportation of illegal immigrants, and efforts to curtail illegal immigration? If not, why not? Genuinely interested in learning how those positions are compatible.

jjn20092• 10 years ago

I think given Tata, Infosys, Disney and Edison electric's behaviour is plenty of reason for people to be critical of how we have setup H-1B. Illegal immigration is illegal so that is a purely indefensible position to have to be in support of illegal immigration. We have democracy and laws such as H-1B which allow us to bring people into the country on our terms (laws which require scrutiny from time to time). Any migration reform should be done through legislation not willful ignorance of the laws. Otherwise what use is the state if they cannot even do what they say they are going to do?

mseebach2• 10 years ago

I didn't expect anyone to be in favour of illegal immigration - what I'm asking about are efforts to curtail illegal immigration and deport existing illegal immigrants? To the extends that laws around H1Bs aren't working, surely the laws around illegal immigration are working even poorer? The population of illegal immigrants is many time higher than the population of H1Bs.

Zigurd• 10 years ago

They are both problems, but with different characteristics. One is an abuse of a law involving fraud and large-scale white collar crime. The thing about white collar crime that makes it especially dire is that amount of money involved, and the damage done, is almost always much greater than low-level street crime.

The other involves illegal border crossings by individuals from a neighboring country or visa-overstaying mostly from South America.

I've personally witnessed a kind of overlap of these problems that went way beyond H1-B fraud and went way into human trafficking and organized crime. In that case a high-tech company was being used as a front for illegal immigration from an Asian country, with no-show workers and other amazing stunts more typical of a corrupt government or union operation. But that was an exceptional case.

adrenalinelol• 10 years ago

No Disney or Tata?

jorblumesea2• 10 years ago

I can't believe in this day and age that anyone is arguing H1Bs aren't a means to get access to cheap labor. If you've ever worked with any sort of international company, you'll get connected to their "IT Team" which usually has some tech sound name like cognizant etc. They are super heavily accented, very eager to please, often poorly skilled and are paid far less than any native born person.

If you deny this exists, you don't work in the tech sector. What is this then, if not companies trying to maximize profits by exploiting foreign born workers? It's just mind blowing we keep going over this again and again when the reality is clear as day. The only logical conclusion of importing large amounts of lower skilled workers with poor language skills is that they are cheaper.

gumby2• 10 years ago

I can't believe in this day and age that anyone is arguing H1Bs aren't a means to get access to cheap labor. ...If you deny this exists, you don't work in the tech sector.

Believe me. I work in the tech sector and I find H-1Bs cost us a lot more, and always have (~25 years of reluctantly hiring H-1B folks from time to time).

There's a ton of paperwork that takes time and costs money and it delays hiring the person. You also have to pay more than the "prevailing wage" which is hardly a burden since I'm already going through all the hassle -- because it's someone we can't find any other way so we're already planning on paying them more. We resort to it when we can't find someone local, which mean we start this slow process after already spending time trying to find someone.

I don't see any problem with this burden BTW (I mean I would like it to be more convenient of course, but the idea that there is a bit of "trade barrier" to bringing in someone from outside rather than hiring a local doesn't seem like a terrible thing). And I'm an immigrant myself.

YES I understand there are H-1B sweatshops bringing in low-paid, not really qualified drudges. They are a problem and they game the system in numerous bad ways (including sucking up all the H-1s making it harder for startups to bring in exceptional people).

But they are two disjoint problems -- the basic idea of H-1 is a good one.

jorblumesea2• 10 years ago

The way you are intending to use H1Bs is appropriate and fine. The way it is actually used is very different. It's mostly used by large spaghetti code factories that over promise and under deliver, pocketing the difference. I am not proud that my country imports foreign workers and works them to death, nor is it okay that they are taking jobs actual Americans can do.

If a system has a good basic idea but is flawed in practice, we should abolish it, no? At the moment, no one is properly served by the H1B lottery except these outsourcing firms.

itissid• 10 years ago

There is another problem that is eating away at the salary numbers of H1Bs its called full time Curriculum Practical Training(CPT). Basically it was intended to be a internship for students on an F-1(student) visa. Now many universities have "Full time CPT[1]" that allows students to work 12 months at a time. This itself is legal[2]. But I have seen many universities are gaming the system like:[3]. Often times no real classes but only "training" is offered for real work preparation. Enrollment bars are pretty low and there is no easy way to determine how big this problem is.

[1] http://international.syr.edu/current-students/employment-ssn... [2] https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/complete-correct-form-i-9/... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/nyregion/new-jersey-univer...

tn13• 10 years ago

If this is the list then I would say DoJ is not doing a good job. The level of H1B corruption in USA is lot more than the level of corruption in Government offices in India. Here are some malpractices I have observed in consultancies:

1. Employers takes money from an individual to file H1B. Charges are typically $4k. 2. Employer runs a fake payroll pays peanuts to the employee while showing a bug salary on paper. 3. Consultancy creates fake resume of its employees and the real work is then done by someone sitting in India. For example Consultancy hires Ms. X on H1B with no work experience. Ms X then works as consultant for an large E-Commerce giant through this consultancy through a fake resume that shows that she has 7 years of experience. Ms X cant code so she calls up a India office of the consultancy who do all the work sometimes even by screen sharing. 4. Hiring managers of large companies are bribed to discriminate against normal Americans and hire these H1Bs through consultancies. 5. Ms x working for consultancy X gets a call from a large company in bay area for interview. Ms Y goes and answers and clears the interview but Ms X joins as employee. In fact answering interview for others is what Ms Y does full time. 6. For telephonic interview many of these consultancies have setup complex systems where Ms Y answers the interiview on Skype but she has a teleprompter in front of her.

Fake H1B:

A lot of these consultancies employ people on H4,F1 or any other visa by telling their customers that these people have H1B. I suspect the large giant companies in bay area already know all this but it works on either don't as or don't tell basis or the hiring managers are bribed.

What I find most upsetting is that the media, overall tech industry does not discuss this at all.

kinkrtyavimoodh• 10 years ago

I see a lot of general anger against H-1B visas, so hear me out. There are broadly two kinds of Indians who work in the US legally (I will come to the illegal part later) under H-1B visas.

[1] The first is typically graduates from elite Indian engineering institutions (Indian Institutes of Technology, or a few other institutes) who have either gotten a job offer from a US firm for their US office straight out of college, or have come to the US for graduate school and are now entering the workforce. These are, in an overwhelming majority of cases, NOT cheap labour. They are hired at market rate (sometimes even higher, because they typically have strong profiles), they compete with the rest of the student and larger labour pool and get these jobs based purely on merit. For reference, I have plenty of friends who are in this category (I am too), and all of us get paid competitive market salaries. We are also not beholden to any firm and are pretty free to switch jobs if we desire. A lot of us have paid for graduate school in the US too, so it's not like we are just somehow freeriding. This is the kind of crowd you typically encouter in the Bay Area.

[2] The second category typically consists of people who don't have a stellar educational background, and are mostly hired in India by companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro et al. for typically very low salaries (say 1/4th or 1/3rd of what a Googler would get in India). They mostly work on outsourced projects that come from other companies (both in India and outside). Often, these workers are then transfered to the US, where they work as vendors for companies such as Microsoft. They are technically employees of TCS or Wipro or whatever (which have branches in the US), and are on the payroll of these companies, but work for companies like Microsoft. This pool of workers is indeed cheap labor for the big cos because they can a) skimp on stuff such as insurance costs b) typically have to pay less anyway c) the low salary is still pretty high compared to what the worker would have otherwise been able to command in India, d) the worker has relatively lower job mobility because their resumes are probably not as 'employable' as Category [1]

Like it or not, [2] far outnumbers [1]. I don't remember the link right now, but these companies apply for in the order of 1000 H-1B visas every year. Most startups etc, for example, apply for a few or in the order of tens at best.

The illegal bit is of course what a few other commenters wrote—there are these 'consulting firms' which will apply for H-1B on your behalf (you pay them $5K or whatever). If you get through the lottery, you can now move to the US on H-1B. You don't have an actual job though you are on the consulting firm's payroll. You then transfer money to them under the table, which they pay back to you as 'salary' because you are on their payroll after all. In the meanwhile, they try to find a job for you. If they can find a job you will then work wherever they set you up and they take a cut of your salary. This is typically done by people who want to accompany their spouses to the US but don't want to be on H-4 visas which don't let you work.

H-1B Willful Violator List of Employers

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