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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?
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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).
If you RTFA you'd see a) it was NJ, not Illinois and b) On Feb. 4, the two men met him again at a restaurant and offered to pay $5,000 for him to recant his story, authorities said, adding the consultant had gone to federal authorities by then and was outfitted with a hidden recorder that captured every threat.
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.
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
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
I lived in a small town on the Jersey shore and the tourist industry was controlled by organized crime. There were things like pizza shops that stayed in business without customers, suspicious fires, business owners being "encouraged" to sell, etc. Each summer an army of Mexican workers would appear out of thin air to staff the restaurants, hotels, and beaches. I figured it made sense with New York City near and the promise of work.
A few years ago, it came to light that the local mob was working with Mexican mobs to traffic in seasonal workers across the state. They were working for next to nothing, usually tricked or coerced into service by Mexican criminals.
Like you said, it was revolting. A lot of them were teenagers or young families with kids. It was a very small town, but we never saw them in school or playing outside. Police found homes with 70+ people crammed in every room. They were apparently told to stay out of sight and spent months with young children shut inside day and night.
> 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!
> 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!
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.
> but most Americans complain about these things for perfectly rational reasons.
ha haha do you really believe that? No they don't, they do it for one of two reasons:
1. They are racist, even if they don't want to admit it (though to be fair, it's usually more ignorance than racism)
2. They are scared that they are going to lose their job to someone else.
I remember when we had a lot of upgrade related tedium that nobody at my company wanted to do, so we hired an Indian company do do it. The white trash people in my company (who, remember, didn't want to do the work), started making silly complaints:
"Doesn't India have like a 24 hour time difference?" No, and if they did, 24 hours would mean 0 hours. They don't mind working different hours to humor us, and it's better if they work off hours anyway, so they can get stuff done when we're sleeping.
"But do they speak English? Probably only Indian" - yeah, there's no language called Indian, brianiac. I guess they didn't know that the official language of instruction at many many places in India is English.
Also, the whole "Our Jobs" concept is bogus. There is work to be done. There is no place where god or satan defined which work is "our work". There's work to be done, and people willing to do it. If I live in New York, does that mean I should say people can't come from New Jersey to do it "My" New York work? I mean, get real. Bitching about people coming to the US to work will only result in the work being moved overseas instead, and the US will decrease in relevance.
Oh yeah, Americans love a free market, when it works to their advantage. As soon as it goes against your advantage, then you don't like it. Part of capitalism is that you will earn the market price. With the world shrinking, and a lot of people overseas willing to work harder than americans for less pay, that market value is falling for many basic jobs. That's the way it is, get used to it - or you could just bitch about it some more instead. There are ways to insulate yourself from it and prepare, though. I suggest you read "the world is flat" for more about that.
Anyway, as an American who had to go through a lot of hurdles to get a Visa somewhere else, I agree that the H1, and similar programs are not great - but in the opposite way. There should be no such requirement to get a Visa. That's just a hurdle to free market dynamics. I would vote that people should be able to move between countries in the future like they do states now, as the world shrinks. All the visa processing mainly just creates headaches for everyone. If anyone could simply move to the US or any other country they wanted (so long as they pay taxes, etc.), then a lot of people would come to the US, and realize that working at McDonalds there isn't any better than working at McDonalds in China or India, and go back. People with true skills would be able to get employed with less hassle, and if you ever got tired of bitching about how immigrants stole "your" jobs, you could go somewhere else and steal theirs. Some countries have taken a step in this direction (The Working Holiday program, which includes Canada, Autrailia, Japan, New Zealand, and a few others) - and it's been good for them in general. It hasn't lead to an explosion of illegal immigrants and the fall of society.
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!
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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