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Report Indicates Widespread H-1B Visa Fraud
Vrst1013 notes a Business Week account of a government report examining fraud in the H-1B program. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services just released a report to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee examining issues with fraud and technical violations within this program. Based on a sample size of 246 H-1B petitions, 13.4 percent showed fraud and 7.3 percent showed technical violations, for an overall violation rate of 20.7 percent. There was slso evidence of payment below the prevailing wage, offers of non-existent jobs, and fraudulent documentation. "'The report makes it clear that the H-1B program is rife with abuse and misuse,' says Ron Hira, [a professor] at the Rochester Institute of Technology ... However, both Presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, have said they support expanding the program."
With the provision that anyone hired must be paid 110% of the prevailing US wage for the work.
Currently, the provision is that they must be paid the prevailing wage, i.e. 100% of US worker. The problem is that the "prevailing wage" is a vague term given the variety of skills and experience candidate might have for a given position. Why do you think that extra 10% would make a difference?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Well, there is occasional enforcement of the prevailing wage requirement (see below). Tack on another 10% fee to fund enforcement, add a H1-B Czar and make violations a felony and I think we would be good to go.
Labor Violation
R Square, a company that provides IT services to large and mid-sized companies, has agreed to pay $95,711 to 12 non-immigrant workers, according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Department of Labor reports that an investigation turned up the fact that R Square had underpaid computer professionals between July, 2006, and July, 2007. "This case demonstrates our commitment to enforce the H-1B provisions which guard against employers undercutting American workers by underpaying temporary foreign workers," Pat Reilly, district director of the Wage and Hour division's southern New Jersey office, said in a prepared statement.
Officers of the company, which has its offices at 5 Independence Way, were not available for comment by press time.
R Square, 5 Independence Way, Suite 150, , Princeton 08540; 609-520-8204; fax, 609-520-8204. Anil Kumar. Home page: www.r-square.com.
Frankly I'm surprised ONLY 7.3% have technical violations. It is an extremely long, complex, and needless process that makes it easy to make mistakes at every step.
There have been books dedicated JUST to the process of US visa application forms, it really is that bad and can take up to or over six months.
I'm sure a lot of fraud goes on... But technical violations is more than likely just people struggling with the system.
It's not just the corporations who abuse H-1B visas. Virtually all, save a few, of the people brought over on them are useless.
I was at one company who employed fifteen of these people at one point. All of them were very misleading when describing their abilities and experience, and thus were virtually useless to us. If anything, they actually caused us more problems that they ever solved by the mere fact that the code they wrote was pure shit.
They were all from different universities and other academic institutions in India, so it's not like they were from a particularly bad school. Likewise, they were of different ages.
Our main problem was that many of them claimed to be familiar with Java development on Solaris, but the closest experience they actually had was VB.NET on Windows. Some of those fellows even had a cheat sheet translating common VB.NET constructs to Java (albeit incorrectly, in many cases). The others just pestered our North American and European developers with questions and problems that even an intern would be able to quickly solve on their own.
It's a great idea to bring the best and the brightest to America. It'll be great for our economy. The problem is, the existing programs bring over complete shit, who in turn harm our productivity terribly.
Anyone else having the issue where the H1B candidates that are interviewed (over the phone, natch) are not the same people that show up on the first day at work?
That's the new scam. The staffing companies specializing in the H1B candidates are using shills for the interviews.
As a current H1B holder, one from India to boot, I concur with you. As for me, I have a Masters degree in Computer Science from a fairly reputed State school here and I am paid much more than "prevailing wages". Usually the firms that take advantage of the myriad loop holes in this process are small consulting firms who are unscrupulous enough to bend any rule and abuse any person (emotional, financial etc., abuse) for making a quick buck. In the 2 corporations that I have worked for, the norm is that the employees of the corporations who are on H1B usually tend to be people who are good technically, communications wise etc., and these people lead generally decent lives. In the same said corporations, there are usually contractors to do a lot of supposedly low level work (QA, low level web app dev, software maintenance etc.,). These are the people who tend to be from the said small consulting and I really feel bad for them. Trust me, the actual H1B holder in most cases is only partly to blame for this blight. The institution that sponsored him is to get the most blame, in my opinion.
As far as how to fix this situation, as somebody suggested below, mandating 100% of pay is of no use without a decent enforcement in place. Increasing legal immigration there by reducing the wage pressures is one way to go. Increasing the scrutiny at the point of origination where this H1B was granted is another better way to go. Mostly it comes down to better enforcement. But USCIS is so busy chasing orange pickers from Florida and Chicken slaughterers from Iowa, the unscrupulous H1B shell companies keep getting away most of the time.
Note: If you think H1B is "fraud", then you really don't know about L1 "fraud". It's even more worse and there are no limits to L1 visas.
Note to Note: To all those people who think I am here not paying taxes and sending all my earnings to India/China/Philippines wherever, we all pay FULL taxes including Social Security and Medicare, even though I am not eligible to use those services until I get a green card.
Perhaps they should manage this like the auto CAFE standard. They could call it Corporate Average Salary of H1B or C.A.S.H for short. I figure they can set an average salary of say $120,000 as these are supposed to be high demand positions. Put say a 5% or so increase a year for inflation as well. Any company not meeting the average will be fined.
With this I could foresee companies trying to sabotage their competitors by wooing their top salaried H1B's and ruining their average. Win for H1B's. Not sure if a limit on how many H1B's would be required with this in place.
There is no justification for the average American earning 10X what another person doing an equivalanet job earns.
Yes and no. It really depends on geographic supply, demand, and cost of transportation. Also, I have to ask, why does this have to be due to the dollar declining instead of lower valued currencies increasing to the value of the dollar, or wages raising to American levels? It's not like the USA is the only country with multimillionaires and high-wage jobs (the world's richest man is a Mexican for crying out loud).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
The tip I was told by a headhunter years ago is to expect to be out of work 1 month for every $10K in salary if the economy is bad (and it's still true, especially so if you adjust for inflation, it was in 1995 dollars originally). So you better have enough in liquid assets to cover that many months without a wage if you don't want to be slinging burgers while you look.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I also hold an H-1B, although I'm a Canadian citizen.
Here are two other problems:
1. No medical checks until the very end of the (optional) green card process. Presumably, an employee running around with TB could be spreading it for years without knowing who it was. Bad for US citizens and lawful aliens. A medical exam should be completed prior to entry into the country.
2. Lack of grace period upon job loss. I'm expected to leave in 10 days flat. If you have an apartment full of stuff, it's kinda tough to pull it all together in that timeframe, lest the BCIS agents come to take you away.
3. Lack of typical state benefits upon job loss. If I lose my job, I pay into unemployment but I'm not allowed to collect even to get back what I paid in. Furthermore, I can't collect unemployment from my home country. That means I need to stash money away for that contingency that I could've used elsewhere.
The solution is an indexed and independently audited visa system whereby visa holders get a provisional permanent green card pending medical, educational and experience qualifications at a rate that doesn't exceed the displacement of professionals already in the country above NAIRU, applicant-funded with additional funds set aside automatically for otherwise standard benefits of a citizen. This is the problem that Canada has in dumping a bunch of people from other countries into the workforce where there are already too few tech jobs (although Canada's bigger problem is where professionals can't be credentialed and end up having a worse standard of living than back in their home country driving a taxi).
Everything in that video is true, but you are not interpreting it correctly. The real problem is that this bizarre process is the only way to get permanent residence for a skilled worker, other than marrying an American.
After working for my employer for 5 years on an H-1B visa, they started processing my green card. They know I am qualified, I have experience in this position, I get along with my coworkers and I am familiar with some of their trade secrets. Of course, at this point they are not interested in hiring anyone else, American or otherwise, for my position.
The law ends up having the effect that my company now needs to hire lawyers to go through this ridiculous process. This doesn't prove that they don't have legitimate reasons to want to keep me around. If they find a good candidate in the process, they will probably try to hire him for another position. They would still have to come up with a reason why he is not a good replacement for my position specifically (my company was hiring programmers at the time).
You probably don't fully appreciate how absurd this game can get. The lawyers try to post a list of requirements that is very specific, but not too specific because otherwise the Department of Labor may reject the application. Over the years, the lawyers get a sense for what they can ask for. For instance, I have a masters, but they couldn't require this in the ads because I don't have managerial responsibilities (you need to use lawyer logic to understand what I just said).
If the result of all this is not the desired one, my company loses a worker that will be very hard to replace and I get to sell my house, break up with my American fiancee and move back to Europe. Well, that or I could marry in a hurry just to get the green card; but you probably wouldn't approve of that either. I guess the "upside" is that some mediocre American programmer would have an improved chance of being hired by my company because good programmers just got a little harder to find.
The report says that 13.4% of the applications show fraud, and I don't know what to make of the 7.3% with "technical violations" (Did they spell their name inconsistently? Did they not hand in some documentation in time?). In any case, most of us are legit. I can see why you would have issues with the fraudsters, not with all of us.
Dude you are singing to the choir here...
I am a mechanical engineer and to practice I need to show an engineering degree.
What I would want for IT is a real IT degree from accredited places. Not these Microsoft, Sun, or whatever solutions.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I was in the Us for about 2 years on TN visas but would have liked to get the H1-B and would have been willing to stay longer (I am Canadian), I was working as a ldap expert doing contract work and worked with Apple and EDS on the GM contract yet when my contract company applied for my H1-B that year 3 times as many applications hit the office in the morning as there where H1-B visas for. Mine was one of them yet I never got one. Then turn around and find a guy working at a McDonnalds as I believe assistant manager who got one of the H1-B's that year. Kind of puts a sour taste in ones mouth that a skilled worker in demand can't get one but a bugger flipper can.
open borders are different than these visa programs, because with an open border there is no implied threat over people's heads that if they ask for fair wages they could get fired and therefore sent home. The wiki entry for H1-B isn't very clear as to whether this has changed, but it sounds like switching firms while on such a visa is at the discretion of both firms.
I am an American Engineer. American Engineers have not kept up with inflation or the real cost of living over the last 10 years. One of reasons is that I and many others are competing with H1B visa people, the vast amount of H1B visas is actually forcing down the "prevailing wage". Look: salaries of Engineers would be much higher if there were fewer of them in this country.
After the 2000 dot-com bust this administration let in 300,000 technical people that year and 280,000 the next year. Over 700,000 technical people are out of work and we flood the market with another 580,000...absolutely shameful.
I had 105 engineers work for me and I had to lay them off when we closed a location in Raleigh, NC. A year later only 30% had found technical jobs. Over 40% went into new carriers and said good-by to their 4 year engineering degrees.
I don't understand why this government thinks they have the right to ruin peoples careers, and set salaries, by allowing the market to be flooded with competitors to us.
This is one reason the middle class has not kept up with the cost of living over the last 8 years.