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How-Not-to-Hire-U.S.-Workers Law Firm Fires Back
theodp writes "Congress is now calling for a Dept. of Labor investigation into a Pittsburgh law firm after a video showing its attorneys advising employers how to game the immigration system was posted on YouTube. Cohen & Grigsby, the firm in question, issued a statement insisting their statements were commandeered and misused, but would not allow CBS to view the original video in its entirety. Cohen & Grigsby has also been advising employers since 2002 that they have nothing to fear if they keep employees in the dark about the existence of DOL-required H-1B Public Access Files."
If you are going to evade the spirit of the law, don't be surprised when the lawmakers take note.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This entire system is broken and should be scrapped. The government simply cannot enforce the restrictions in place. The H-1B is supposed to be a temp visa for positions that can't be filled domestically, but I see very few people using it that way. The sponsoring companies are using it as a means to keep labor costs down, and the visa holders seem to mostly be using it as a stepping stone to citizenship(the ones I know are). You should just accept this and roll the visa into a citizen-track visa, make it easy for visa holders to bring their families, make it easy for them to switch jobs, and then they won't have to worry about getting booted out of the country if they lose their job.
open borders and a welfare state are mutually exclusive.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
One of the earliest discussions of this video was on dice.com, and several people downloaded it before it got pulled. And they made certain that it was sent to the Programmer's Guild as well as Loub Dobbs, and other media outlets.
However, dice.com has initiated a censorship campaign against certain posters and postings against H1-B visas. It's not clear if this is approved by management, or it's the random act of a few moderators. What is clear is that requests for this to stop, and for clarification of Dice's censorship policy have been deleted as well.
Add to this Dice's postings of standard pro-H1B visa propaganda, and it's very clear that Dice is in full support of the H1-B visa program.
This is odd for a job board which seeks the best talent in the U.S., but I guess it's the H1-B shops which are paying Dice's bills.
So until this censorship and propaganda campaign ends, I am taking by business elsewhere. I urge others who seek new jobs to do the same.
has the tag line 'progressive law' all over the place. I would suggest replacing the word 'progressive' with 'breakin' the'
Call them up and express your displeasure...
Main office:
Pittsburgh, PA
11 Stanwix Street
15th Floor
Pittsburgh, PA 15222-1319
TEL: 412.297.4900
FAX: 412.209.0672
Yeah. I'm sure the wrist-slapping will be unparalleled in human history.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
You're right. This has been going on since the inception of the H1-B program. In 1990, I watched a parade of US citizens interviewing where I worked for an engineering job opening later filled by an H1-B. The opening had also been posted to a bulletin board there with a salary that was about $10k less than a US citizen fresh out of engineering school would have made. Management was annoyed at having to jump through these hoops to obtain the cheap labor.
What is new here is the YouTube factor. The lawyer isn't really sorry his comments were commandeered. He's sorry he and the others got busted on YouTube. This film is an outrage, as is the H1-B program. It takes a film like this to cause a stink. Too bad we didn't have YouTube 17 years ago.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
You laugh, but the US dollar really is in trouble. It's a short 4-5 cents before the Canadian dollar is above the US dollar
You must be an importer. For everyone who wants to export goods, or compete against imported goods, or sell stuff (and services) to foreign tourists, sell stuff to domestic tourists who decided not to go to more expensive other countries, etc, a low dollar against other currencies are a GOOD thing.
All those dollars (note: dollars, not debt instruments - that's another discussion) held by people in other countries can only do ONE THING in the long run: Come back to the USA and buy something from here. A low dollar is just going to *finally* reverse the flood of US dollars out of the country to the mideast oil producers and Chinese factory owners. It's about time.
How are Americans more entitled to an American job from an American company that gets American tax breaks and largely serves the American consumer-base? Hmm.. Gee, I don't know. And don't you dare act like every other country isn't extremely protectionist of their jobs and workforce.
Further, capitalism is fine. However, while the average corporation can seek out labor all over the planet and simply put up an office or hire workers from the cheapest areas, the American citizen does not have such a pool to choose from - neither in terms of employment or cost of living.
A corporation can pick from the entire planet and decide to invest in an area where they can pay experienced professionals as much in salary as the average American citizen pays in rent. While the corporation and the American citizen may be based in America, the corporation is not constrained by the dynamics, labor supply and financial situation of this country. The worker, however, is. We don't have a choice. Milk is about $3.85 per gallon. Period. I can't go somewhere and buy it for a nickel a gallon. And if you want to live close enough to these corporations to work for them, you're usually looking at more expensive living. You will pay $800 or $1,000 or $2,000 for a one bedroom apartment or half a million bucks for a small house. Period. Unless you plan on commuting 1500 miles from some hill in the midwest out to the west coast every morning.
Then, to add insult to injury, this shoddy form of sham-capitalism isn't enough for them. They want to compound it by telling us that Americans are not plentiful enough or educated enough. Now, if there is a shortage of milk or gas, I have to pay more money for it. If there is a shortage of experienced labor in this country, corporations simply artificially adjust the value of these workers by lobbying government to let them bring in more employees from overseas or to simply move a chunk of their own operations overseas.
People try to suggest that Americans are racist or xenophobic when all they are doing is showing concern for their well-being and their careers. They have a right to do so. Especially when - on top of the imbalanced system - we have underhanded corporations and services as in this article working to drill us even further into the ground.
The argument, though, is that since the law states the employer must make a "good faith effort" to find a qualified US worker that they ARE breaking the letter of the law. When the whole objective of the process is to go through the motions with the end goal of not finding a qualified US worker (i.e. "we're going to make it look like you're looking for qualified applicants even though you have absolutely no plan of hiring a US worker"), it seems to me any rational person would not consider this a good faith effort.