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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."
I wail it
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?
Let us all mindlessly bash the whole H1B program, all Indian techies and Indian call centers - this is our chance!!
hang the H1B-hiring traitor pimps at the crossroads and leave them there to rot.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Geeks live for this sort of crap, so don't try it.
You will lose.
[End Of Line]
Why shouldn't a company be allowed to do this in a free market? The Market is self-correcting, so if they do this then no one will work for them and they will go bankrupt. So let them do it, that is the American Way!
When I was an undergrad I used to eat across the street from the Engineering building at a small Vietnamese restaurant, it was cheap and hot.
One particular late night I came there with a few hours of Hydro HW, sat down and ordered some Pho and started taking my stuff out of my backpack when I heard this inhuman scream and a slap. I thought they were being robbed or something and froze there in terror until I started hearing the crying and "shhhhhh" sounds I remember all too well from a Catholic school upbringing, someone was being beaten in the back and whoever was doing it was trying to stop other people from finding out. I am ashamed to say it but I went outside and smoked a cigarette, ate the Pho and left as quickly as possible. I think I even left a tip. The next week I came in during the day to get something and the woman behind the counter had a fading welt in the shape of a belt across her face and she was smiling.
So, after that shameful moment of realization I went to the Women's Resource Center on campus and told them. Never found out what happened though, that woman's face behind the counter haunts me to this day. Too many of just do nothing when we know the shitty situation those workers find themselves in.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Not that I advocate that sort of thing, but when I worked for local uhmm...businessman as a young hoodl..er...turk, we did more than talk. We made the sale with a sample of the wares. We also offered to send samples to his fam...uh associates. We were always 100% successful and no outside competitors were needed to uh... close the sale. When you mean business, you show it, you don't say it. It's a tough world out there and you gotta get your pound of flesh, uh so to speak. I think the guys in the old ...union...would get a chuckle out of these amateurs.
I've aged gracefully and the old "union" sort of fell apart due to dea..chronic illness and incarcer..early retirement. I've got a Joe Shmoe job now that is far less hazardous and I never had to suffer any of the usual "illnesses" associated with the job. Too old for that crap now.
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.
Email to info@comdataus.com. If you have hiring authority, promise never to use them. If you don't have hiring authority, just remember the name and badmouth them to anyone who does.
Think global, act loco
their abuse, there are no psychic cops; report crime, document crime, be free
20 years for extortion, and how many years for falsifying the need for entry level IT workers? I can name several unemployed people who could easily fit the task of "web development, information technology and software development" mentioned in the article. Specialized skill, yeah right.
Judging by the content of recruiters e-mails that I get, it is not possible to get an IT related job in the United States right now unless you are an H1-B visa holder.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Why didn't anyone tell me this earlier? I didn't know I could use my computer science degree to intimidate people. So here is my resume future iron fisted IT companies.
I'm 6'6", 220 lbs and I have a black belt in mixed martial arts. Also I have a degree in computer science, and some other degrees...wait ignore that part the first part is more important for what you need me to do.
Get back to me as soon as possible
All of the criticism that they get is very well earned.
H-1B developers don't know what they're doing. That is why they aren't employed in India. That's also why they're being hired; because they're dirt cheap. Of course, the non-technical managers hiring these fools don't truly understand that. Even though these managers can't themselves code at all, they're absolutely sure that every programmer is equivalent to every other programmer. Reality always hits them hard when they find out that the Indian guy they just imported can't code even as well as an American high school student.
Every Indian-trained technical of any sort that I've dealt with has been a fucking fool. They can't complete even the simplest of tasks, and that's even when you're holding their hand and telling them exactly what to do. I think it's how they're trained. They're not trained to think, but rather to regurgitate answers. When it comes to programmers, they can recite Java method signatures (you know, that our IDEs would auto-complete for the rest of us), but they can't come up with even basic algorithms on their own, or make any sort of a decision that involves critical thinking. When it comes to network technicians, they just follow the examples in the Cisco textbooks they've bought; they just have to follow some sort of a template.
Indian call centers are by far one of the most pathetic things to arise from the computing industry in decades. They take the worst traits mentioned above, and combine and multiply them into the ultimate package of uselessness. Not only are these people utterly stupid and ignorant, and they have to follow templates and scripts, but they turn around and like to you when they answer the phone with their thick accents, and say something like, "Good day, sir. I am Michael and talk to me of your problems." No, Thuriphindinar, your name is not "Michael".
That said, Indian-born developers who get all of their training (from age 3 or 4 upwards) in Europe, North America, Australia or Japan usually end up being okay.
Under Illinois law, you can only audio record if all parties are made aware of the recording. If this guy was recording surreptitiously, then he might be in for some legal trouble of his own, not to mention that the recording may or may not be admissible (IANAL).
This is exactly why we have criminal law. There is a special place in hell for people who take advantage of vulnerable people, but while they are here on earth we have another place for them--prison.
I'm outraged.
...URL is:
. http://www.desicrunch.com/DisplayReviews.aspx?company=Comdata_Consulting_Inc
Hey Fed's, you listening?
I remember years back being lured to a new job with one of the incentives being that the job included health insurance. Turned out that they 'had' it terms of it was offered, not included. It was an awful plan with no employer cost coverage. The cost for my family would have been a grand a month if I had paid for it.
I explained that I was one phone call from going back to where I came from and that the recruiters deceptive words were going to have a cost. In the end they ate the cost of the insurance, and I stayed where I was. Some people will bully you unless you stand up for yourself. All that being said, in today's economy I don't know if that is still good advice.
How about accountability in H1B with public records? That would solve this kind of problem for the poor guy who was owed so many back wages. Those in the states who are losing out to H1B's would better be able to make the case that their are Americans who can do the job. Those that do come over could avoid being turned into virtual slaves, I have met far too many H1B's who were worked 80 hours a week for wages less than half what an American would take. They would do it too, whether it was because their passport was confiscated or because such wages were still that much better than what they made at home.
This is fascinating in light of the recent lawsuit filed and won in Louisiana on behalf of a group of teachers from the Philippines who were brought here to teach and virtually held hostage by the agency that recruited them. (They won their lawsuit a few days ago--can't recall the more recent source.) Their visas were held by the recruiter as they were squeezed for ever-increasing fees, forced to rent substandard housing at exorbitant rates, and otherwise abused.
It's especially fascinating to me that in these recessionary times when recent American college graduates can't find work, we have to import elementary and high school teachers and people with the most basic IT skills so that they can be held in indentured servitude and squeezed for more and more money. I guess human trafficking is no longer limited to unskilled workers.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
It would not only be a fun and refreshing change from "normal" work, it would create so many new networking opportunities. Think of all the great and influential people you would meet!
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
As it is, having a h1-b or having to physically move overseas or creating some sort of relationship over there, has kept us from sinking that low - but it will happen eventually. I don't see the World's economy growing fast enough to account for all the labor being added as more and more countries start trading with the rest of the World.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
> Try Googling "human trafficking". I think you'll find that many undocumented immigrants live under conditions little better than slavery.
Close. Actually, I think you'll find that many undocumented immigrants live in conditions of slavery. To the extent where the only real distinction is that the law--which they don't know anyway--says that it's illegal.
You'll also find that hundreds of thousands of American teens are at high risk for being kidnapped or tricked into a life of slavery. Sources: The Polaris Project, Terry Lee Wright's River of Innocents, Victor Malarek's The Natashas.
Not that we should care whether it's an immigrant or not. And the difference in the cultures of different immigrant groups make different techniques useful in finding and prosecuting human traffickers. But it's not really an immigrant problem, so much as a human one.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Extortion was very common at BellSouth a few years ago when I worked there as a contractor. The majority of contractors were H1Bs from India. They were working 50-60 hour weeks but were told to only charge 40 if they wanted to keep their jobs. It wasn't the contracting firms putting the squeeze on them; it was Bellsouth management putting pressure on them to meet deadlines without charging overtime. Their rates were undercutting local contractors and with them only charging 40 hours for 60 hours of work, there was no way to compete, so I bailed.
Parent is NOT a troll.
> 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.
I agree. We have to change it. But it's not just a foreign problem.
This is New Jersey. If you haven't heard a story about something like this happening in New Jersey, you haven't been listening. It's like not hearing a story about questionable behavior by waste contractors in several of the nation's major cities, or not hearing about racism on the part of law enforcement in some towns in the South. Sure, there are lots of legitimate businesspeople, and waste contractors, and helpful law enforcement officers. But the other kinds also exists and even thrives. Sure, sometimes its people bringing in their problems, but we have a lot of our own.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
IT staffing firms don't fall into the first category, and web developers don't fall into the second.
Twenty years is not enough and I hope they sweep up the entire company!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The idiots from the IT outsourcing firm should have done it the "dot com" way. Under pay him by the same amount but promise him lots of stock options with absurd vesting requirements. Too bad if the the stock options go under water and then disappear through a corporate buyout.
You may have better odds striking it rich in Vegas or by playing the lottery but stock options in lieu of salary are legal.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
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.
"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."
We offered him a rig with DUAL SLI ATI Radeon 5970s and an i7 Extreme CPU with liquid cooling. Badda boom, badda bing, case dismissed
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Have that apply to firms like Grigsby & Cohen(known for their hostility to citizens in hiring practices) that as well.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
> Good examples, but FYI the word "née" works the other way around.
You are correct, but you didn't explain it, and I think people will have a hard time remembering how it works if they don't know. The word née means "born" so it's like you're giving the birth name of a person. That's why you list their original name after the word née, e.g. Xe (née Blackwater).
There is no shortage of citizens that are capable of doing the job - they just have the problem of being a US citizen.
Cancel the program and make it impossible to ignore the citizen until there is a real problem (long-term & short-term unemployment under 2%). Make it so that permatemping/temporary work does not count towards that 2%. Then reinstate with a sufficient amount of people(whom are paid a wage that discourages bribery) to enforce that law.
When you hear "shortage" used to describe the amount of citizens in a needed part of the private sector(whether it is IT or most non-temporary forms of employment in the US), the source is lying through their teeth.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When will recruiting companies learn about the basic technologies that we consultants use on a daily basis such as "tape recorders" and "video cameras"?
That is what we said about slavery for over 100 years.
Really. Most Americans are clueless regarding H1b and its variants.
Big Indian company: own clients, 95% employees, including PMs and business analysts working in USA imported from India on H1B (less) L1 (more). Pay would be much less compared to America/Americans. They are rotated and sent back to India after some time. Once such a co gets a contract, expect to see only Indians in their payroll. Discrimination, as they have a US office? oh yeah. Does anyone care? guess not.
Small Indian company: 100% employees on H1, (some on L1 if the company is Indian and have a token India office as well), save for Suzi secretary answering phones and occasionally checking boss's 'hardware'. Two-room office in some city. Great links with recruiters, esp ones in the favored contracting links of US companies. No direct clients. no hiring manger ever talks to them.
Consultants: often the cheapest India can offer (Good ones work for multi-nationals with India offices, or the very big consulting cos) are the only ones working with small cos. Live in a small apartment with roomies. dream of transferring to another company for a permanent offer and eventual green card.
Client: Wants only people with 10 years experience in every technology even ones invented last year.
Modus operandi: consulting co takes the techie, gives him a one week buzzword course, asks him to rewrite the resume using several sample ones, making a 3-year experience 15 year one (every consultant from India has been working on projects with brokerage firms on their stock trading app for the last 25 years, if you read sample NYC bank-consultant resume), arrange friends as old-boss references, and pass on to a middleman. Middleman, usually white American, will arrange an 'interview' with the client company whose pockets he has already padded. Result the consultant gets hired.
If its a big co with a direct project to the client, no worries, everyone goes into the project. Everyone from PM to development to test to meeting minutes shall be taken by employees from India/Brazil/Philippines (whichever is cheaper). Those jobs are GONE at that point.Those jobs are never openly hired, but filled only using offshore cadres.
So there. Sometimes smaller (est) cos try to increase their margins by not paying consultants while on bench, or 'unpaid leave'. Sometimes they will be paid subsistence wages. Sometimes some smart guy will read up on labor laws and complain to DOL. Then stuff like this happens.
Who supposedly support the free and lubricated market when it comes to the free movement of capital across the globe can be so protectionist when it comes to labour. By the tenets of capitalism, a Bangladeshi man should be able to move to New Jersey without let or hindrance and put X plumbers and handymen out of business. How come the proponents of capitalism can consider with glee another country's protected industries and financial markets falling to the inexorable march while at the same time, oddly, not sharing the glee of, say, a Sri Lankan chicken farmer at the thought of selling Americans chicken for 0.50$ / lb, retail?
Capitalist? Ha
you actually have no idea about the level of corruption in "developing countries". There may be lot of sh!t going at top level, but at grassroots level the level of corruption in US is not even a small % of what goes on in countries like India. I live there, so I know.
Heck, to repair my phone line I was asked for a bribe directly, ad if you want a new electricity connection, be prepared to pay big.
And guess what, in the west you have to bribe to get something "Wrong" done, in India you have to bribe for the right thing too!
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
ARE YOU LIEING in court? ATI cards don't do SLI. That will be 20 years bailiffs take him away.
10 years ago if you had a degree and an MCSE you could start at 5k a month and if you had 5 years experience demand 8k a month or walk out the door! Houses were only $170k with 5% down. As long as you could show up you could work anywhere.
Could any of you imagine reading such a story 10 years ago? Shaking head ...
I keep hearing how bankers such as Goldman Sachs are betting agaisn't America and Greece are doing everything in their power to have total destruction in order to reduce bargaining power and enslave the world in debt.
I have nothing really to say other than disbelief on how this could happen in such a short short time. I do not think I should peruse I.T. anymore but this globalization is likely going to adversely effect all jobs.
http://saveie6.com/
It's good to see the Department of Labor putting some teeth into labor law again. During the Bush years, too many regulatory agencies were out to lunch. The SEC, of course, we know about. Less well known was the attitude at the Labor Department. Now they're catching crooks again.
Also, Obama just made two recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB was down to two members, and couldn't do anything. Now the NLRB is back in business. It's going to be easier to unionize.
US wage and hour law, as enacted by Congress decades ago, is quite pro-labor. It's the enforcement that's been weak. Looks like that's changing.
Even worse, all of his code was for Webistics.
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
This is not surprising. Some so called "consulting company" which has a non existent office, brings people from abroad (India?). They pay for air fares and even provide accommodation till they get projects to work on. Once they get into projects, they are billed individually for say 100 bucks per hour, the consultants take out 70 bucks and pay the rest 30 to these fellows. And all the while, they are under constant threat by their consulting firms as they cannot move to a different company (Once you arrive on H1B you can shift to working as employees of US companies on an yearly salary). If they come to know about secret negotiations with the new company then God help you.
Prostitution, that's the work the people on H1-B do....
I am sure that people are going to clam me for this, but with so many unemployed IT people in the US, why are people being imported from other countries? I can see the reason when someone has extremely rare, exceptional, and valuable skills and the US labor pool is unable to fill the demand, but that's not the case with most of these H1-B people. I've seen DBAs, MSCEs, etc from India, Dominican Republic, and Egypt being overworked for $40k in jobs that should be paying a lot more than that, and to workers who are treated well. (OK, well not physically abused or asked to break the law in order to keep their jobs). Where are the unions when this happens? nowhere to be found.
I had been thinking that the US should trade only with countries who have adequate labor and environmental laws, so all businesses have a fair playing field. But then, I realize that in many countries,it's easier to pay someone off to skirt the law than it is to follow the law. To a certain extent this is true here in the US as well, which is why we need to find bastards like ComData and squish them out of existance.
All this talk about making the US a "competitive business climate" is just a race to the bottom in worker's rights. It's time to create standards of behaviour for labor and to see that they are adequately enforced. I would hope that other countries can do the same, and a healthy and viable trading economy between the best countries would be the result. I don't care so much that a salt&pepper shaker set made in the US costs $2.49 while one made in China costs $1, if the quality of the product and the treatment of the workers who produced it is adequate. This doesn't mean that I believe in this whole "Buy American!" crap, because there are so few products which have a certain and comprehensive national origin, and that there are plenty of employers in the US who treat their employees poorly. Being treated well doesn't mean that you have a guarantted 5 weeks of vacation per year, it means that the working environment is decent, there is no deception in wages and benefits, that number of hours per day and days per week are reasonable, and there is no personal abuse by supervisors or co-workers permitted.
I don't, myself, put up with crap at the workplace. I had a boss threaten me with physical violence, in a serious manner and he had the ability to do it and a reputation of a very bad temper. I simply got up and left. I probably could have sued him, but I didn't know that at the time.
Another examle:
Vision Systems Group Indicted for H1B Visa Fraud
http://www.huliq.com/3257/77441/vision-systems-group-indicted-h1b-visa-fraud
H1-B visa specifically encourages this kind of practices. Low wages and exploitation of immigrants are results, not causes, of this program.
USA is currently the most inaccessible developed country for skilled immigrants. Many other countries either have sane work permit systems or have introduced point systems for skilled immigrants, which basically mean that a skilled immigrant can come there, search for a job, if he/she hasn't found one before, settle and live his/her life contributing to the host country's economy and integrating with it.
In contrast, people coming to the US under H1-B visa are almost exclusively those recruited by companies specializing in trafficking low-wage workers and enslaving them for a limited period of time before dumping them. For a normal company or applicant it's typically way too much hassle and too little benefit to even consider going through this procedure. Both are much better off moving somewhere else.
I hate Illinois Nazis.
It is not some kind of absolute free-market concept that if you make it easier to get legal guest worker status, that would improve the conditions for these workers because they would then have basic legal protections.
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
In the abuser's mind, THEY OWN their victims. So if they have to hunt down the victim that has left them, it is the worst insolence and to be punished as harshly as possible. It is also their biggest fear, that they DON'T have absolute control, and that their life-lie can be found out. Though they are unaware of this, it is just the overwhelming and unrecognized emotions that dictate their inhumane actions.
A perpetrator might very well kill a victim that has fled from them, feeling justified in doing so, or just losing all control because of their own fears and shattering of their illusion that they have absolute control. It's predatory action, without awareness of consequences. Like an automaton. All this, while towards other people, such people may show signs of empathy and friendship, there is this black hole inside that yearns to live out their darkest wounds (a perpetrator has always been a victim at some point of time).
When you don't even speak the language, it's hard to escape, almost impossible. Like in Dubai, people are being held there in the millions as labour slaves. They can't just flee, because they don't speak the language, the slave-culture is ingrained in Dubai and they may risk death and injury even to think about fleeing. Often, they have been promised great wages, great work-conditions, left their families, borrowed money to travel and is now stuck in a quagmire of economic and social oppression inside Dubai while basically being held as slaves:
The Dark Side of Dubai
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
Although this is more a socially-accepted slavery, the underlying problems are similar, just in a different flavour. It's not sustainable in the long run. Dubai is like a big fat lie, that eventually will fall back into the desert and the natural environment, sooner or later.
I would never have thought a Suzanne Vega reference would show up show up in this thread.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Indeed. Canada suffers from similar issues, to the point where glorifying terrorists in public floats seems acceptable. Freedom of religion is one thing, but it seems that when it comes to conflicts with law or good sense, we err on the side of not offending said religions/beliefs. Sorry, but if your beliefs involve blowing up a plane (or marketplace, bus, subway, whatever) full of civilians, then you they don't belong here!
IMHO, feel free to wear what you want (except weapons). Read whatever book you want. Attend whatever ceremonies you want. But when it comes to violence or encroaching upon the peace/safety of others... law should trump religion.
...do we really need the H-1B program?
A few months after the company name is fucked, you have a new company name. Sounds like the birth of a new name to me.
Think global, act loco
They are not lying so much as using the word in a new way. There really is a shortage of programmers willing to work at WalMart salaries.
Think global, act loco
I am happy to see these 2 crooks nailed by the Govt. and I say being an Indian, once H1-B slave worker who earned freedom to see the american dream unachievable. When I first started I earned 42K/year which was a whole lot compared to what I earned in India(5K/year).I thought of saving and get some economic freedom.Little did I realize it was very little compared to what an american citizen would get for the same job,I was subcontracted to IBM(big -blue). I am sure the middle level contracting companies took most of the money while I was chained into bondage with a hope to get a green card.I slogged my precious years in which I would have given my energy to do something big not only in monetary terms also in creative aspects.I am in this profession not by my education , but by my will to be what I was denied in India. As the years took toll on my psyche where I learnt that most of this consulting industry is built on leaches who have little concern for real customer but on their bottom line. I finally reached the mecca of IT(Sillicon Valley) where I am able to relive some of the dreams only to see the whole economy tanking no matter what hard work you put,you can never have an american dream. I tell most of my folks back in India, if you can make it successful back home , you better do it there, other wise spend a lifetime chasing a mirage.I get to hear that you made a lot of money and you dont want anyone else to have the same opportunity, so I say,it comes with a price,are you ready to pay.
... anything's legal, as long as you don't get caught. - Travelling Wilburys.
-Dave Haynie
The problem is the H1B system. Because it costs so much money in legal fees to hire an immigrant, you end up with corrupt organizations who exploit this "debt". If a skilled immigrant can get a job that that meets a minimum salary, they should be easy to hire. Simple as that. The way I look at it: I can compete with an immigrant who is able to demand top dollar for his skills here. I can't compete with an immigrant who's locked out of the job market and being paid like an indentured servant. We should be importing the best and brightest into this country so they can earn top dollar here, pay taxes here, start businesses here, etc.
Not one joke about Middlesex? Apparently no one RTFA...