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Complaints Filed Over Firms Seeking H1-B Holders
Vicissidude writes "Since May, the Programmers Guild has filed 100 complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing several companies of advertising that they specifically want H-1B workers, a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act requires that U.S. jobs must be available to U.S. workers. The complaints stem from ads containing wording such as "We require candidates for H1B from India," and "We sponsor GC [green card] and we do prefer H1B holders," the Programmers Guild said. The Programmers Guild, looking for ads on major online job boards, has so far targeted only ads seeking computer programmers, the guild said. It plans to file 280 more complaints over the next six months."
In America, we have different classes of Visas available for different reasons. H-1b is INTENDED to allow American companies to hire people with Master's degrees or better who have skillsets not available in America. In practice, it's used to bring in as many Bachelor's Degree holders as possible every year to drive wages down in highly skilled jobs. It's so popular that businesses actually run out of these visas within a few minutes of them becoming available every year. Current cap is 65,000 per Federal Fiscal Year- they're usually gone by 20 minutes after midnight on the first of October.
The big part is that these visas were originally sold as having *no* effect on US employment- after all, the skillsets are supposed to be completely unavailable in the United States, and no way to train anybody in that skillset. In practice though- well, you see some of the quotes from advertising for these jobs.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Also it is good to know there are minimum salary levels for the H1-B workers. A company can't hire a senior programmer from outside of US and pay 20k per year. This doesn't mean that some companies might not abuse the system and try different tricks to get cheaper work force but I really belive that the majority of H1-B workers came in US because companies couldn't find qualified people.
The truth is that there aren't many good programmers out there and there is still a lot of demand for them. I see many programmers coming for interviews at the company I work for and when someone good arrives (not very often) it is very difficult to get them as they already have several offers from other companies.
BTW I am also a H1-B worker and I'm payed a competitive salary and the company also pays a lot of legal fees for my H1-B and green card. Besides that I pay income taxes and spend all my money here in the US. America has a lot to win from the H1-B program.
but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried...
Often it is not. There are many wiggly loopholes. Examples from my old blog:
# Resume Templating - Add every skill that a given H-1B candidate has on his/her resume into the "needed skills" line of the application form. That way the "needs" profile will never match a citizen above the probability of winning the Instant Millionaire lottery. Government inspectors are usually too overworked and/or not knowledgeable enough to check and follow-up on actual skills used on the job, especially if there are more than a few. (This approach was also covered in another message.)
# Undocumented Experience - Claim a highly experienced H-1B applicant is really only a beginner, and thus a company gets experience at beginner rates. Inspectors cannot realistically check somebody's skill background as obtained inside a foreign country. If they do find out, claim you didn't know. Just make sure the experience is not on your "official" copy of the visa worker's resume. It is an easy lie to get away with.
# Take Advantage of Situation - Work the H-1B overtime or weekends without extra pay. Complaining risks getting the H-1B sent home, so they usually keep quiet. Plus, they may not understand how our legal system works or be intimidated by a process foreign to them. (US money is worth more to them due to exchange rates when they eventually go back home, and thus they often just live with labor abuses without complaint in order reduce risk while obtaining their financial nest-egg.)
# Tinker with Titles - Information technology (IT) titles are often vague, inconsistent, and overlapping. It is hard to penalize a company for using the wrong IT title on an application form because there practically is no such thing as an objectively "wrong title" in IT. Plus, most IT work involves a mixture of a lot of different skills, such as programming, analysis, debugging, customer support, documentation, etc. There are no consensus metrics for categorizing these based on ratios or percentage of usage.
# Outsource the Buck - A big company can contract the H-1B from a small, fly-by-night company that keeps a portion of an H-1B's pay, delays paychecks, does not pay overtime, etc. The big company that contracts out is then not exposed to the risk of dubious activity. They can claim that they did not know the contractor was abusing the visa workers (and may not know). Such small contracting companies are often staffed by people from the H-1B's originating country such that if they are caught or risk being caught, the company folds up and goes back to their home country where they can do other business. The risk of real penalties is very small. (Cross-country white-collar crime investigation tends to be poorly coordinated between countries involved.)
# Shred Citizen Resumes - Companies applying for visas are required to place an ad in a typical job listings source and review received resumes or applications for qualified citizens. Government inspectors may ask to see such resumes. However, if somebody takes citizens resume and shreds them, nobody besides the shredder will ever know they existed.
# Lopsided Interviews - Government inspectors don't sit through most live interviews. Thus, a company trying to weed out citizens can simply ask tough questions when interviewing the citizen, but be easy on the visa candidate.
Table-ized A.I.
And then there's the method preferred by a previous employer of mine - have a Sri Lankan CEO that has good buddies in the Sri Lankan IT services industry, and mysteriously have people shipped in without even having posted the openings. When I started there, our department had four Americans, one Pakistani, and one Bulgarian. The Pakistani and Bulgarian both were U.S. citizens. Five years later when I left, we had four Americans (3 good people, 1 basket case), two Pakistanis (one H1-B) who were a little above average, one Indian who was largely useless (H1-B), and IIRC, 7 Sri Lankans (all H1-B, all pretty decent). I personally handed in no less than five resumes of qualified locals that I knew for two of positions that *were* advertised, and not a single one was contacted. "Qualified" meaning they had the required skills (and I could personally vouch for their competence), most of the "good to have" skills, were available, and were willing to work for industry standard wages. The "industry standard wages" part was the kicker - I found out later at least two of the Sri Lankans were working for a little more than half of what I was, when their experience and abilities warranted pay on par with mine. They had also told me that they were bound to the company by restrictive contracts that would end up costing them thousands of dollars if they left, but felt that they had to do it if they wanted to eventually get a green card.
The H1-B program is a joke. It's often not fair to the Americans that get displaced, and it's often not fair to the visa holders, who in my experience can end up in situations resembling indentured servitude. The only parties that consistently benefit from it are those unscrupulous companies who aren't willing to follow the law, since the government does next to nothing to enforce the requirements placed on employers.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas