Labor Department To Destroy H-1B Records

Presto Vivace writes H-1B records that are critical to research and take up a small amount of storage are set for deletion. "In a notice posted last week, the U.S. Department of Labor said that records used for labor certification, whether in paper or electronic, 'are temporary records and subject to destruction' after five years, under a new policy. There was no explanation for the change, and it is perplexing to researchers. The records under threat are called Labor Condition Applications (LCA), which identify the H-1B employer, worksite, the prevailing wage, and the wage paid to the worker. The cost of storage can't be an issue for the government's $80 billion IT budget: A full year's worth of LCA data is less than 1GB."

Comments

US Citizenship

[Anonymous Coward]

Once H1-Bs get used to working for peanuts to fulfill their "American dream", the next step is give them US citizenship so government can say "see, US workers are willing to work for less," then use the lowest common denminator to set wages.

Re:US Citizenship

[Taco Cowboy]

The government of the United States of America is behaving very much like an accomplice to a crime

Their unexplained decision to delete EVERY.SINGLE.RECORD regrading the H1-B program is tantamount of the DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE !

How can the Americans allow their government to turn so rogue, so fast ?

Re:US Citizenship

[NotDrWho]

The government of the United States of America is behaving very much like an accomplice to a crime

I wonder if the founding fathers ever could have imagined a world where the government they created would be completely owned and controlled by an oligarchy of huge corporations. Could they have imagined a government where something akin to the Dutch East India Company simply walked in and individually bribed every single Congressman and the President to do their bidding, without the American people even realizing it?

Re:US Citizenship

[afidel]

Could they have imagined a government where something akin to the Dutch East India Company simply walked in and individually bribed every single Congressman and the President to do their bidding, without the American people even realizing it?

Sure they did:

1. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1802 letter to Secretary of State Albert Gallatin.

2. “I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
— Thomas Jefferson.

3. “The power of all corporations ought to be limited, [...] the growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses.”
— James Madison

4.“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”
— John Adams

Indentured servitude and slavery

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because the H1B visa problem is rife with abuse, ranging from fraud, most common, to basic slavery. If you don't believe the slavery port realize that a lot of people working on H1B visa's in the US have signed very abusive contracts with brokers in their home countries. If they quit and leave they'll be in a heap of legal and financial trouble when they get back.

The tech companies know this, the Labor department knows this, Destroying records s a way to hopefully prevent any future legal action on the part of H1B applicants in the future. Similar thing happened with Migrant workers from Mexico, taxes and fees were taken out, then records were destroyed to make it impossible for workers to sue later or collect benefits promised.

Plausible deniability

[NimbleSquirrel]

The answer to this is easy: plausible deniability. If the records are only temporary, and get expunged after 5 years, then the US government suddenly have an out for bad press over a long history of abuses of that H1B program that have gone unchecked. Instead of changing policy, fixing the program, and investigating historical abuses by various (mostly tech) companies, it is easier to rewrite histrory.

The answer will now be: 'Oh... we can't possibly investigate company X for H1B visa abuses. The records were temporary and no longer exist. Since the records no longer exist, we cannot possibly comment. To the best of our knowledge, the H1B program works.'

H1B applicants are people too

[melonman]

The article doesn't seem to point out the obvious explanation, ie that H1B applications contain personal data (of the type Slashdotters are usually passionate about protecting), and that it is good practice not to keep such information hanging around once it has served its primary purpose. There are presumably solutions to the research concerns, such as aggregating the data before it is deleted or collecting the specific data necessary before the records are deleted.

Re:H1B applicants are people too

[jenningsthecat]

The article doesn't seem to point out the obvious explanation, ie that H1B applications contain personal data (of the type Slashdotters are usually passionate about protecting), and that it is good practice not to keep such information hanging around once it has served its primary purpose.

Given the recent reports of how H1B workers are treated as slaves in abuses reminicent of human trafficking, the timing of this seems more than a bit suspicious. And at least one source has the DOL saying "will no longer respond to inquiries to search for records in response to FOIA requests". Explicitly pre-empting the FOIA process without even the suggestion that the data might be anonymized to allay privacy concerns is, again, more than a little suspicious.

There are presumably solutions to the research concerns, such as aggregating the data before it is deleted or collecting the specific data necessary before the records are deleted.

Yes, there are solutions, but will they be implemented? And is the Dept. of Labor so tone-deaf, and so ignorant of the controversial nature of this decision, that they didn't think to put an anonymization program in place in advance of this announcement? Somehow I doubt it.