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The Sopranos Meet H-1B In New Jersey
theodp writes "We smack this IT geek around a little, take him for a nice car ride, threaten to 'take care of him' if he doesn't recant his story, give him 5 G's for his trouble, and badda boom, badda bing, case dismissed. Federal prosecutors allege that an H-1B visa-holding IT employee who was owed some $53,000 in back wages was threatened in meetings at restaurants and in his home if he didn't change his story. However, the victim captured some of what happened on tape, and two employees of an Illinois-based IT staffing company — not named in the indictment but identified by the NJ Star-Ledger as ComData Consulting Inc. of Rolling Meadows, IL — are now facing extortion-related charges and a possible 20 years in prison."
This behavior is unacceptable from companies that have offices in America. That might be how people do business in other places, but they need to leave that shit at the door. Perhaps someday we'll realize this has been going on in Chinese restaurants and massage parlors for 50 years and do something about those too?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Don't. Do. Nothing.
Our Talent Engagement and Management Teams strongly believe in
The capacity of recruiters for absolute BS is amazing. Mind you there are smart ethical headhunters out there, but they're few and far between.
The H1B program deserves to be bashed, mindless or not. It artificially depresses the IT job market by flooding it with workers who are easy for companies to bully or take advantage of. These workers allow themselves to be treated like crap because they cannot leave their jobs without risking getting sent back to India. Most of them are afraid to speak up when they are treated unfairly because #1, they feel like they have it better than they did in India and #2, they don't know their rights in our country.
Anyone notice how "careers" is misspelled on their website? That alone would cause me to NEVER use their services, because if you can't proofread your own damn website, what guarantees are there that you pay attention to detail in whatever work you provide?
If they do this, then no one will work for them and they will change names and thrive. See Blackwater (nee Xe), Anderson Consulting (nee Accenture), AirTran Airways (nee ValueJet), Philip Morris (nee Altria), and perhaps as a zombie counterpoint, Caldera International (nee SCO Group).
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They should be able to quickly and easily get a citizen-track visa or green card, but if we just grant citizenship to everybody who wants it, people will just be citizens for as long as it is convenient - say, as long as it takes to acquire the knowledge to offshore a process or function. There is every reason to give green cards to hardworking people who want to live and die in America, but I can't fathom why we want guest workers - except to hold down domestic wages.
When leaving only gets you dragged back and beaten twice as hard for escaping, it's not really an option.
Escape is a gutsy move, sure to piss off the captors and it may even cost you your life.
The lion's share of the burden rightly falls on outsiders who are not as easy to catch, and are in a much better position to summon the cavalry.
You can't say it's always "mindless" to "bash the whole H1B program, all Indian techies and Indian call centers"--there are a few who do it out of prejudice, but most Americans complain about these things for perfectly rational reasons.
"Buy American and Americans work." That was the well-advertised slogan of the 80s, and yet NAFTA and outsourcing empowered a transnational corporate world in opposition to the very values of localism and national pride which most Americans grew up embracing. Importing foreign workers and exporting American jobs are some of the most visible violations of these values.
The oft-repeated mantra is, "We don't have enough skilled workers, so we need H1B!" Then why does almost anyone in the tech sector know many skilled but unemployed Americans? And if there were a real shortage, introductory salaries and incentives would let the "free market" attract more Americans to become qualified for tech jobs in the near future--but instead, H1B keeps introductory salaries and incentives artificially low and _creates_ the very shortage tech employers complain about!
"Call center work (or 7-11 clerking, or construction, or industrial farm work, or any 'unskilled labor') is drudgery no Americans are willing to do!" Bullshit. Maybe they won't do it for minimum-wage-or-less like immigrants or outsourced labor, but if not unfairly undercut by immigrants or outsourcing there are millions of Americans who would gladly work any and every job. Just look at the damned unemployment rate, especially among minorities--it is patently unjust and unreasonable to support immigration and job outsourcing when so many Americans are left jobless. If a job is vital and needs to get done, employer and employee will find the right pay each is willing to live with--the market will set fair pay in a fair, largely closed system. But in an open system filled with endless hordes of immigrants and outsourced labor willing to work for wages no American can live on--unless he's willing to live in a closet and eat the cheapest processed foodcrap imaginable and never even dream of supporting a family and kids--employees become a disposable commodity and employers will exploit the unjust and unnatural imbalance.
So, while what happened to this H1B guy is inherently unfair, criminal, and wrong--it is the foreseeable result of the H1B program, which along with outsourcing and uncontrolled immigration is creating an imbalanced market where workers both skilled and unskilled are disposable commodities instead of people.
And that doesn't even begin to touch on the cultural issues. The Western world, and especially the U.S., is currently committing cultural suicide by not limiting immigration to rational levels. We are a nation built on immigration, that's true--but it has never neared this uncontrolled torrent before: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5871651411393887069#
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
Contrary to what you might think, she could leave if she wanted to.
VERY common misconception where domestic and foreign worker violence is involved. No, a lot of the time these people don't believe they have a choice. By the time things have progressed to this point, most of them have it pretty thoroughly engrained in their minds that offering any form of resistance, to say nothing of reporting the problem, will only lead to intensified beatings, to the point of severe injury or death. These people are controlled by fear. Fear of worse beatings. Fear of death.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
would you turn off Rush for a few minutes and do some actual reading? Try Googling "human trafficking". I think you'll find that many undocumented immigrants live under conditions little better than slavery.
Wow, another mindless rant full of misconceptions, Where should I start?
The H1B's (as opposed to "outsourced jobs") are paid the same as an American worker would. So, please learn the difference and understand to place your indignation in the right place. The H1-B Program is a legitimate way for companies to be competitive. You should be holding your representatives and senators accountable for updating the rules and enforcement to root out these types of fraud. But it is easier to "bash the whole H1B program, all Indian techies and Indian call centers". In this case, the angst is misplaced and done out of ignorance or malice. People who engage in this are, quite frankly, ignorant and will willfully throw the baby out with the bathwater. Call your senator and congressman and tell them to fix the H1 Visa program.
Anecdoatlly, I feel that the mantra "We don't have enough skilled workers, so we need H1B!" is actually accurate when taken in context - and for two completely different reasons. One is that you're lumping all "skills" together: a Web Developer is NOT a good systems administrator or a DBA. So, you do get spot shortages of specific skillsets in places. The second is that the Indian software industry focuses on developing niches more effectively than in the US. Our kids are well rounded - they're not as good at being specialists in a given field. So, I can locally find a guy who can figure out his way in a given system (makes for a great supervisor of contract resources, BTW). But if I need someone who understands the intricacies of the SAP-HR module, it is more efficient to get a contract specialist. This is where companies that staff using H1-B's excel because I (a) can't keep this specialist busy and productive 40/hr a week month-after-month and (b) he won't ever be remotely interested (even if he does have the skills) in taking on a more flexible role.
In short, the above has been my experience.in the past 15 years of being in IT and then in SW Development. I have found that many Americans workers detest working with Indian colleagues (regardless of whether they're H1-B or not). I find this racist and stupid in the extreme and this attitude really hurts them and gives American workers a bad name. I know that some managers will prefer to not mix US sourced folks with employees or contractors of Indian origin.
I actually had a US Citizen turn down a 6month contract at $105/hr because he felt that the working conditions were not appropriate. His complaint: no assigned cube with window view and he reported to an "unqualified" supervisor ... which was code for someone of Indian background.
So, I have a hard time finding sympathy with your post. Perhaps if it was a little more informed and researched, I might be willing to engage constructively.
And fear of the unknown. Even being beat or dying doesn't hold a candle to the fear of the unknown. When people are in an abusive relationsihp, they often stay because the abuse and beatings they get here are at least known. Comparatively, they don't know if they leave _what_ will happen.
Fear of the unknown stops people from many things: from leaving abusive relationships, to success in business and life. It's also a huge problem for guys wanting to ask a girl out.
Here is an even better idea: Lets change the immigration laws so that if someone wants to work in the US, they can quickly and easily acquire citizenship. I assert that anyone who wants to be an American citizen enough to ask to be, deserves to be. All of this isolationist shit should have died along with the 20th century.
Let me tell this to you as a foreigner.
You can't give citizenship out left and right. What makes your country is your culture (and I don't mean things like country music or apple pie here...), and if you just open your borders, you will be immediately swamped by third-worlders (like me) who want their piece of the quality-of-life pie. They don't care in the slightest how the pie came to be there in the first place, or what they have to do, long-term, to keep it - well, some will, but they are the minority. Most just want to have it.
Therefore, for immgiration to be productive, rather than detrimental, to your society, you need to make sure that, however many people you take in, they are assimilated into your culture - and that's your upper limit. And the relatively straightforward way to see how good the immigrant is assimilating is observing how they do when they're still on worker's visa. It also gives them time to learn the language, as well as basics of living in a new place (you'd be surprised to know how many things that are mundane to you are strange and alien to a newcomer), and see what the society there is really like, and decide whether they're really sure they can be a proper part of it.
To that extent, the process of acquiring permanent resident status (and eventually citizenship) from worker visa shouldn't be too simple - you need some gates there to control it. The biggest problem with your program as is is twofold. First, there are no established terms or guarantees. In most other countries that have similar programs in place, you are eligible to apply after working in the country for a certain specific period of time, and the process is straightforward in a sense that there are usually point-based systems with published evaluation criteria, so, for the most part, you know in advance whether you will be approved or not (unless you don't pass a security background check - but that isn't typical, though chances of a "false positive" are higher in today's terrorism-crazy world). The amount of time that processing of the application takes from the moment you submit it is also generally known fairly well.
In contrast, applying for a green card from H1-B is very much a gamble - you never know if they approve you or not, nor how long it takes - and it can take really, really long. I know of people waiting for 7+ years to get there; for comparison, in Canada, the whole process almost universally takes less than 3 years from the moment you first set foot in the country (including 1 year on worker visa so that you're eligible for fast-track permanent residence).
The second problem is just the one GP noted - that H1-Bs are severely disadvantaged, because they're tied to their employer, and, should he kick them out for any reason, they have to start packing right away - no chance to find another job (in practice, quite a few people actually break the law and overstay to do so - but this is also very much a gamble). Yeah, in theory, employers have to prove that the wage they offer to employee is above market average for this position - but there are many well-known tricks on how to legally do this for practically any number. And, once hired, the employer has both the carrot - raises - as well as the stick - termination of employment - at his full disposal.
If a citizen is denied a raise that he believes is rightly his, he can just quit and go look for a better job - and, if his assessment of his worth was correct, he'll find one. An H1-B just has to suck it up, because however bad he has it, it's usually still way better than what he'd get back home. Ditto for overtime.
And, of course, it screws both H1-Bs them
True, they just oppose a government powerful enough to do something about it.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
And whose legal and cultural system they don't understand. There's a quote from movie, where a factory owner in London is trying to get one of his workers, a woman illegally immigrated from Turkey, for a sexual favor. He basically says, if you don't do it, I'll report you to the government, and they'll throw you in jail. "And British jail is not like your Turkish jail, where the men and women are kept separate. If you go to jail you will be raped every night, over and over again." 100% bullshit, but 100% effective.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.