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FWD.us Wants More H-1B Visas, But 50% Go To Offshore Firms

Posted by Soulskill on from the sources-say-50%-is-nearly-half dept.

theodp writes: "On the day the U.S. began accepting H-1B visa applications for FY2015, Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC stepped up its lobbying efforts for more tech visas even as ComputerWorld reported that the major share of H-1B visas go to offshore outsourcing firms that use visa holders to displace U.S. workers. 'The two largest H-1B users,' notes ComputerWorld, 'are Indian-based, Infosys, with 6,298 visas, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), with 6,258.' ComputerWorld adds that food and agricultural company Cargill is outsourcing IT jobs to TCS, including 300 in Minnesota, the home of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, sponsor of the I-Squared Act of 2013, which would allow H-1B visa caps to rise to 300,000 annually."

3 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Very bad... by harryjohnston · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have you seen http://www.h1bwage.com/ ?

  2. Re:If you're going to screw... by dbIII · · Score: 4, Informative

    It isn't being used for that in many cases, though

    Australia adopted the idea as well, just like many other stupid ideas from the USA and not many good ones. Initially is was to fill the shortfall of doctors after we'd cut the numbers of doctors we were training (a lobby group thought scarcity would be a good way to drive up doctors incomes). Now it's even being used to employ cleaners as "skilled workers" that are supposed to be unavailable in the country. The reality is that mining companies and similar are just importing cheaper employees via such a rort whether there are people available to do the job or not. There are certainly large numbers of unemployed people who could do such a job in the areas where cleaners and other nonskilled or semi-skilled staff are employed on indentured servitude visas.

  3. Re:As someone who was on H1-B, it's a scam by sBox · · Score: 3, Informative

    I am a US citizen (and native) who was employed by Tata for a F500 company (call them BigCo.) I had been with BigCo on a temporary project with another staffing group and BigCo's managers forced Tata to find and hire me for a basic support contract while BigCo's long time employees were slowly laid off. Two of us were citizens of the US on this contract, brought in by management, everyone else was either H1B or offshore. I can assure you that Tata let my contract expire and replaced me with an H1B worker already on their payroll who made significantly less all the while Tata charged BigCo the same rate. The mandatory HR training calls were hilarious. I've been outsourced, been an outsourcer, and an outsourced outsourcer. The H1B system totally abused in a way that non-foreign staffing companies only wished they could do.