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Whistleblower In Limbo After Reporting H-1B Visa Fraud At Infosys
McGruber writes "The New York Times has the sad story of Jack B. Palmer, an employee of Infosys, the giant Indian outsourcing firm. 17 months ago, Mr. Palmer made a quiet internal complaint that Infosys was committing visa fraud by bringing 'in Indian workers on short-term visitor visas, known as B-1, instead of longer-term temporary visas, known as H-1B, which are more costly and time-consuming to obtain.' Since making his complaint, Mr. Palmer 'has been harassed by superiors and co-workers, sidelined with no work assignment, shut out of the company's computers, denied bonuses and hounded by death threats.'"
Jack B. Palmer first made a quiet complaint through internal channels at Infosys,
Was he really naive enough to think that these were the actions of some rogue managers and that the company would be thrilled to have him put it all in writing? Did he expect them to send him a Thank You letter, beginning with "Thank you for putting this illegal activity, that we've been quietly doing for years under the table, into writing. We really appreciate that you've opened us up now to criminal liability and that your complaint will cost us a fortune. We're so glad that you did this instead of looking the other way and keeping your fucking mouth shut like everyone else in the company. Here's your bonus!"
Dude, if you're going to be a whistleblower, accept that it means you have to burn that bridge. There is no going back across it and expecting everything to be the same afterwards. Being a whistleblower means making the right moral choice and then paying the price for it. Yeah that sucks--but what's new, huh? Jesus and Superman didn't fight the Romans and Lex Luther without expecting some backlash, you know.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
They should just outsource his job - true poetic justice.
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Of course, and that is why the punishments for these things have to make it not profitable. The simple way to do that is ban those people from ever coming back to the USA and fine the company millions. If the execs knew about it toss them in the clink.
"The New York Times has the sad story of Jack B. Palmer, an employee of Infosys, the giant Indian outsourcing firm. 17 months ago, Mr. Palmer made a quiet internal complaint that Infosys was committing visa fraud by bringing 'in Indian workers on short-term visitor visas, known as B-1, instead of longer-term temporary visas, known as H-1B, which are more costly and time-consuming to obtain.'
Hopefully this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to more of these kinds of things.
Since making his complaint, Mr. Palmer 'has been harassed by superiors and co-workers, sidelined with no work assignment, shut out of the company's computers, denied bonuses and hounded by death threats.'"
Isn't that something called retaliation? People that have a vested interest in moving work offshore really hate it when there is evidence that you're doing it based on fraud - especially fraud that exposes them for being against US citizens.
If Infosys willing to do everything against this guy, he sure must have something damning enough to warrant death threats.
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How are they getting around it? Are these workers completely undocumented? Are they lying at the border? Did they not fill out I-9s? Because if they filled out I-9s, and those were looked at by USCIS, this sort of thing would be picked up pretty goddamn quick.
Given the amount that I've personally spent on legal immigration, this pisses me off a little bit. I'm not exactly surprised, but it seems to be yet another case where breaking the law as an individual would have adverse consequences (e.g. in this case, where one would be banned from the United States between three years and indefinitely, depending on the overstay) while breaking the same law as a corporation is completely overlooked.
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Execs hate them, timezone differences, outages of all kinds, in short they seem great but have a ton of drawbacks.
I bet infosys is feeling stupid for outsourcing the death threats instead of using American IT workers to plant kiddy porn on his computer.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Why?
He can easily get a job at a company that does not have any foreign workers or break other federal laws.
Banning the exec from coming to the USA might also be a deterrent.
Rounding up all the current visa holder documents and giving them a good once-over would be fun too. But don't stop at Infosys.
Seriously, though, my bank rarely lets a withdrawal go by unnoticed, but our government can't keep track of work visas, much less tourists. Pathetic. No one in government or business as a dog in this fight - they all have reasons to avert their eyes from illegal immigration in all of its forms, work visas and H1whatevers included, and no less grievous than all the other forms.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
"Classified" material that never should have been classified, but instead was trying to cover-up military blunders. Example: The whereabouts of the journalists who were killed. The military said "We don't know" to the poor family members, but they knew all along it was a friendly fire incident.
Other examples: Covering-up the shootings of kids and torture of POWs. I'm glad Manning and other wikileaks persons are not "just following orders" while military/war crimes are being committed. We the People deserve to know what is actually happening.
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They should feel stupid for hiring an American IT worker and placing him in a management position. An Indian dev lead would not have reported this.
There is much bigger reason why companies don't want to obtain H1-B. While on work visa, it's relatively easy to find some other employer willing to take you on H1-B or even on adjustment of status to Green Card. On the other hand, somebody working on B1 can't look for another job at all - he can't claim experience because it is illegal. Makes nice slaves. It used to be popular in 90s, but in little shops.
It doesn't change the fact that this guy is sitting at home being paid $90,000 a year (yes, I read the article) and whining about how he is going nuts because he doesn't have any real work to do.
He deserves it - over the last 7 years his job put plenty of his fellow citizens in the same position, minus the pay-check. I'd have the same level of sympathy for a crack dealer who complains about someone selling them fake drugs. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Rien.
He knew the details of the visas - that they were for people who were not supposed to be working in the country - and let's face it, he placed them anyway. So now he's going around with a gun strapped to his ankle (again, I read the story). He's in fear of his life and ready to blow people away (he drew down on a door-to-door salesman) because someone taped a print-out death threat to his office chair, and he's gotten a couple of crank phone calls?
He must have led a really, *really* sheltered life. Even high school would have been too much.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Some things we look at and think that people should know, and we may be right. However, information is often classified not because the information itself could damage national security, but because its release could reveal the identity of valuable intelligence sources to the enemy or could have other consequences not in our interest.
Much of it wasn't even related to military, such as the hundreds of thousands of State Department cables. The military could throw out charges based on anything that could even be remotely considered to be whistleblower material, and still have enough to send him away for life.
No, we don't. Imagine a leak resulting in a New York Times front page in 1943, "Allies Crack German Enigma Code Machine!" when the Germans thought it was secure in a practical sense through the end of the war. How many battles would we have lost? Maybe even the war.
The title says "H1-B visa fraud". But the fraud did not actually involve H1-B visas at all; it involved brining people in under B-1 ("business") visas - which do not permit working in U.S., but are for attending meetings, conferences and such - and then having them do actual work while in U.S. It is certainly a visa fraud, but its only relation to H1-B is that those people who were working have to be issued H1-B (or L-1, or one of several other types of visas permitting it) to work.
Is that just shoddy writing, or a a cheap attempt to stir up the usual flamewar over H1-Bs "stealing our jobs"?
I can pretty confidently say any death threats can be outright ignored, as to threaten death would imply the ability to logically plan the act and then execute it properly.
Actually, what could have been done was to publish stories about the code being cracked well before it was. DIsinformation is a very effective wartime tool.
From that point on, every failed plan would be attributed to the imaginary "they cracked the code!"
And then when it was finally cracked, even if someone leaked the truth, they wouldn't be believed, because by then it would be "obvious" that the stories were just a plant designed to encourage FUD.
Similar to how the brits published bogus accounts of german attacks (v1, v2) that caused high casualties when they missed their targets, to encourage them to keep missing ...
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
>whom did Palmer do a service by calling attention to the situation?
Job-seekers with a legal right to work.
This is deliberate, they can't track the visas because Congress won't allot the funds necessary to do the job. Newt Gingrich's moment of brilliance was when he realized that he didn't have to go to all the trouble to eliminate the EPA and IRS, just de-fund enforcement of the laws that his sponsors dislike. Did you know that the IRS is now required by a 1990s law to spend considerably more on searching for cheats on the Earned Income Tax Credit (a huge money loser) than on searching for corporate and millionaire tax evaders (a money maker)?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
This is too much like a cockroach problem. Slashdotters have been complaining about these kinds of practices for a very long time. People need to befriend this whistle blower so he doesn't commit suicide or some violent crime. I get the feeling he was quite naive and believed he was doing "the right thing in the right way" and now he is paying the price with his physical and mental health. (If it was me, I'd be riding my bicycle and playing XBox games all day collecting a paycheck or finding other ways to enjoy the vacation... but maybe that's a stupid idea too for reasons I haven't yet considered.) I have dealt with some ugly situaitons in the past (though not quite as ugly as this) and I simply had to maintain my course and attitude through it all. I had to remember not to let "other parties" determine who I am and that I will not change who I am in response to anything anyone else does to me. I also had to keep my eyes on the horizon rather than focusing on "here and now."
These companies like Infosys are scum. They want to play in the US market and make US dollars, but they don't want to play by US laws and are willing to commit criminal acts in the name of business. I hope people are imprisoned, deported and businesses get shut down. And before anyone makes claims about killing industries and all that nonsense, I just have to say it'll never happen. There is still a lot of money to be made in the software business even when playing by the rules and operating within the law. The only problem these fat, greedy, lazy Indian companies have is they don't want to SHARE the profits according to the law and according to any sense of fairness and respect.
Agreed. Take a baseball bat straigt to the head of these companies. Gather and release. Make it public and nuke them from space.
All too often the most evil actions are created by big organisations. They all tend towards being sociopathic.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
There should be a bounty system for whistleblowers to go straight to the government.
Companies who do these things are the enemy, not to be warned before being struck down.
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