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Trump Administration Cracks Down On H-1B Visa Abuse (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Money: The Trump administration is cracking down on companies that get visas for foreign workers and farm them out to employers. Some staffing agencies seek hard-to-get H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, only to contract them out to other companies. There's nothing inherently illegal about contracting out visa recipients, but the workers are supposed to maintain a relationship with their employers, among other requirements. In some cases, outsourcing firms flood the system with applicants. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency said in a new policy memo released Thursday it will require more information about H-1B workers' employment to ensure the workers are doing what they were hired for. Companies will have to provide specific work assignments, including dates and locations, to verify the "employer-employee" relationship between the company applying for an H-1B and its visa recipient.
H-1B visas are valid for three years and can be renewed for another three years. The USCIS says it may limit the length of the visa to shorter than three years based the information an employer provides. For example, if an employer can't prove the H-1B holder is "more likely than not" needed for the full three years, the government might issue the visa for fewer than three years. The memo also says the administration wants to prevent employee "benching." That's when firms bring on H-1B visa holders but don't give them work and don't pay them the required wages while they wait for jobs.
H-1B visas are valid for three years and can be renewed for another three years. The USCIS says it may limit the length of the visa to shorter than three years based the information an employer provides. For example, if an employer can't prove the H-1B holder is "more likely than not" needed for the full three years, the government might issue the visa for fewer than three years. The memo also says the administration wants to prevent employee "benching." That's when firms bring on H-1B visa holders but don't give them work and don't pay them the required wages while they wait for jobs.
doing something useful for once. No more useless indians taking jobs here.
Employers view H1b Visas as a worker for 33% pay.
Oh, and they like the 'loyalty' of a worker who is dependent on them to stay in the country.
A step in the right direction.... it has to continue until H1Bs are reduced and the American jobs and salaries increase.
Apparently those are still urgently needed by important US businesses.
No come on...go the distance and make all of these an open auction. Probably requires legislative changes for that though...
I don't have much opinion on increasing or decreasing the numbers, but this will just eliminate the abuse of the system where a corporation can essentially run a slave temp agency. I like it.
Seems to me there are a lot of places that cheat the system, post jobs for 1 day in obscure places, so they can hire foreign workers at depressed wages. I think the Administration should crack down on those. They would not have to reach far, as Mar-A-Lago is a prime example of such abuse.
I had "domestic workers" in the subject to begin with, housekeepers and such for hotels, but then it gets confused with domestic and foreign.
it's a hot topic for the mid-terms. 'claiming' to clamp down, when trump himself has abused them, and the gop's wealthy donors abuse them.. it's all talk. they won't actually do anything.
and.. it is a smoke screen to try to dilute the current 'gun control' debate... again, because mid-terms.
gop is circling the wagons... they're ducking and covering...
just wait til they get desperate, see the blackness staring at them, and start passing more shit legislation, like the billion dollar tax cuts for the wealthy, before their time is up... and it *will be up*.
they aren't done fucking-over the american people. not by a long shot.
So just to be clear, your argument is that we should do what Obama did - nothing - and let companies not only abuse undocumented workers, but continue to abuse the H1-B system too?
Or did you just want to bitch about Trump by bringing up some unsubstantiated tabloid rumor that is about what some guy 20 levels below Trump did in the hiring for some demolition project?
As you are an Obama supporter, I can understand your position would be to bitch about everything and do absolutely nothing to curb abuses by business. I just can't understand the logic in such a position.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Trump is up to his armpits in screwing with American citizenship and employment rights with birth tourism.
* http://theweek.com/speedreads/748344/russian-birth-tourists-are-flocking-miami-trump-condos-give-birth-american-citizens
That's right: his wealthy Russian friends are bringing their pregnant trophy wives to pop out the next generation of Russian oligarchs on US soil in Trump's lovely birthing condominiums.
Nobody ever tried to get rid of cockroaches that way. Wonder if that will work.
I'm sure if he paid a decent wage he'd have no trouble at all hiring all the staff he needs from the high quality American workforce.
And even though they're not H1-Bs, he can send Melania's parents home, since he's real big on ending Chain Migration too.
And after that he can send Melania back to Bosnia; she overstayed her visa, illegally. No statute of limitations and all that. What, you think just because she's married to the president that she's above the law? We settled that with Nixon – nobody is above the law.
Once Melania's gone he can bring back Stormy Daniels for round two in the Lincoln bedroom. Maybe she can wear a blue dress just for the irony factor.
Their legal advice was all the same: Fill out the I-9 form for everyone we hired, and make photocopies of the two pieces of official documentation presented as proof of work eligibility. The government provides no way to confirm that these documents are legit, so the I-9 and photocopies become proof that we did our due diligence, and shields us from prosecution for hiring unauthorized workers.
In other words, the way the system is currently set up, having illegal immigrants on your payroll is not proof of wrongdoing by the employer. If the employee presented what seemed to be proper work documents at the time of their hiring, the employer has done nothing wrong by hiring them. And in fact the employer can be sued if they deny employment to anyone because they suspect the documentation was forged, and it turns out to be legit. Basically the employer has no choice but to accept without proof that any provided documentation is legit.
If you really want to stop illegal immigrants* from being hired, the government simply has to set up a system where the authenticity of work documents can be confirmed by employers prior to hiring someone. Most of the people we later found to have presented forged docs were woefully easy to spot - the name didn't match the SSN, or the last known residence didn't match the SSN. Oddly, the people who are most likely to blame employers for hiring illegal immigrants are also the ones most vehemently opposed to this type of system to easily authenticate work documents.
* This is why the term "undocumented immigrant" is a misnomer - there is no way for an employer to distinguish a documented immigrant, from an undocumented immigrant who is doing everything in their power to fool you into thinking they are documented. The only definitions which work are:
Nancy Palsi would be proud. Or should be, anyway.
Oh wait. No she wouldn't. Nancy Palsi and Democrats think CRUMBS aren't for Americans.
Yeah sure. That's the problem. When Trump was hiring illegals and paying them $4/hour he had no way of possibly knowing if they were here legally or not. The fact that they were willing to work for $4/hour and spoke no English wasn't any kind of clue.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Intel in Hillsboro and Nike in Beaverton abuses H-1B visa program by contracting out to "H-1B sub contractors".
Companies are addicted to cheap outsourced labor...there's no way this wasn't drafted without consulting them first. It sounds like the sponsoring companies are just going to have to jump through another hoop to show that there's still a relationship with the company. And you can bet there is...Tata, Infosys and the like use their H-1B slots to move people on-site to their customers. These people either do the work that absolutely can't be done offshore or are interfaces between what's left of the on-site team and the offshore IT farm.
Immigration law is full of all sorts of exceptions and gray areas, and I'm sure a lot of those were purchased by lobbyists. So, while it appears to be a good step in the right direction, it's not an outright ban and probably won't make much difference.
They'll just take the diversity angle
Oh, this should be good ... someone finally does something about H1Bs and .. it's Trump!
Slashbot heads will explode like 60s scifi robots caught in a contradiction ... "must hate Trump ... but H1Bs ... but must hate Trump ... " Ah, this is awesome.
Hurrah, the Trump administration does something I support!
I would call my self a liberal who is highly sympathetic to fiscal conservatism (the later being how I was raised). My dream of a 100% Republican controlled government would be that they would run the numbers and cull less productive government programs. Sadly, Republican's have abandoned the one platform I've always respected them for, the debt. It bothers me that this is the very best our "conservative" government has been able to bring us.
American social conservatives empower these people who just shovel more and more wealth towards out affluent, all the while they bankrupt our government.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
There is really no need for all of these euphemisms like "undocumented immigrant." The term "illegal alien" works just fine.
Another unnecessary term is "dreamer" which apparently means an illegal alien who had entered the country as a minor.
> ... the truth Hillary should have won ...
Still having blue episodes for missing out on Queen Hillary's coronation ceremony?
> The government provides no way to confirm that these documents are legit, so the I-9 and photocopies become proof that we did our due diligence, and shields us from prosecution for hiring unauthorized workers.
There is such a system. It's called E-verify.
https://www.uscis.gov/e-verify
It has been around for years, and it is audited.
The purpose of this is so that Trump can sell the favor of selective enforcement by not cracking down on H1Bs at companies that support him
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
There is a system, it is called E-Verify
https://www.uscis.gov/e-verify
The problem with blaming employers for hiring illegal (undocumented*) immigrants is that the U.S. government makes it impossible to actually verify if a potential hiree is in fact authorized to work in the U.S.
So what you're saying is that you're ignorant? E-Verify has had you covered for years.
Watch out for Infosys to start buying Univ of Phoenix PhD's for their contractors. SAP implementation? Sure we have 6 Astrophysicists that can customize those idocs for you.
Fascinating, but you forgot to cite the source of your definition? The prominent online dictionary Merriam Webster defines it as:
The counterpart to this could be referred to as "legal alien," or "a foreign person who lives in a country with official permission to live there."
This is a nuanced topic and the answer depends in part on your response to the following question: Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Another crazy idea is for these people to go through the legal processes to obtain official permission to live in the country, like what the "legal aliens" have presumably already done.
How tiresome. Here's how to know whether someone is an illegal alien or not: Does he only speak Spanish and does not have the equivalent of a college education? If yes, the guy is an illegal and should be deported.
Granted, the above only nabs uneducated Hispanic illegal aliens but, considering they are the vast majority of the illegal aliens in this country, it's a good start.
Meanwhile, I was born in the U.S.; completed primary, college, and post-graduate school in the U.S.; and every job I have ever held required that I produce at least two documents that I am legally allowed to work in this country. These typically mean a birth certificate or U.S. passport, and a driver's license.
Why is it so "hard" to filter out the illegal aliens in this country? Where I live, I could easily point out over 100 illegal aliens on any given weekday.
The Republicans don't really want to get rid of illegal aliens because they're a source of cheap, exploitable labor. The Democrats don't want to get rid of illegal aliens because they vote Democrat. And, yes, illegal aliens vote in U.S. elections.
Finally, neither Democrats nor Republicans have to live near the illegal aliens with heavy crime and third world conditions brought about by third world behaviors. The hoi polloi get to bear the burden of dealing (crime, Spanish in public schools, Spanish public services, etc. paid through taxes) with illegal aliens.
If the democrats are suck bleeding hearts why didn't they even talk about this problem when they had power prior to Trump?
On an issue by issue basis, polls have consistently supported positions he's also supported.
What is more, if Trump policies are cited as Obama or Hillary policies, you find that many people that reflexively oppose Trump agree with the policies. This makes clear that the opposition is not to the actual policies but rather to the R after his name and his self presentation which rubs many people the wrong way.
Again, those that find this an inconvenient observation will say it is opposition to policies that are immoral.
Policies such as what and according to what clearly undefined moral code are we supposed to be judging him?
Not supporting effectively open borders? Americans don't want that. There has been support for reducing immigration and making more strict the policies that allow existing immigration for well over 30 years.
What about so called "free trade"? Its a farce and everyone knows it is a farce. Free trade was something the US pushed during the Cold War as an inducement to join the First World. It was one of the carrots to side with the West over the Russians. It has generally acted to grant foreign companies access to US markets with few questions asked or conditions required. Now that the Cold War is over, there is no justification for it anymore. It is not infinitely sustainable even if we saw infinite political utility for it. There is obvious damage to many American industries and communities to no particular value to our society besides some geopolitical buy in.
What about government corruption? Here any faction that claims this isn't an issue of import is just lying. The last several years have been an endless embarrassing laundry list of corruption, conflicts of interest, nepotism, theft, incompetence, and dereliction of duty. This is actually starting to become an existential issue for the US government itself. If the government neither is doing the things it was created to do reliably nor has the confidence of the people to do those tasks then the role of the government in society collapses. This is how great empires die with some frequency. They hollow out... rot from within... and then one day... the shiny veneer that promised solidity and perfection collapses. Consensus exists that this should be taken seriously.
What else? Gun policy? If the anti gun people had the votes they'd just go to constitutional convention rather than whining endlessly about restrictions and living constitutions etc. We've changed our constitution as recently as the 1980s. If you have the votes, you can change it. If you don't have the votes then all you can do is bitch. That the anti gun people are bitching makes it very clear they don't have the votes.
On and on and on. The man is sitting at 50% approval right now.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/11...
Most presidents don't pull 50 percent. Naturally this is an average statistic from Gallup... we'll have to see what Trump pulls at the end of his term. But if he gets anywhere near 50 percent then he'll have gotten about as much approval from the public as the average president which is impressive considering the military grade invective thrown at the man.
Lastly we get into this issue of his immorality. Well, according to what? What are the principles of this morality? Is it written down anywhere so we can examine it? Where does it come from? I'm not saying anything he does is or isn't moral because whatever his morality is will be subjective to whatever standard we're using. It is like judging if someone broke the law without citing which legal code the person is under. So where does this moral code come from? Because it sounds increasingly like the code of "you're a bad person because you disagree with my politics". And whilst I can understand that moral code, it is clearly not one that anyone outside that moral paradigm should take seriously.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
But this is much needed and def a step in the right direction... Lots of companies ABUSE these visas and pretty much traffic Indian IT by subcontracting. At my office got to the point now that Latinos, White and Asian are a minority . We all keep getting replace by Indian willing to do the job for a fraction of the salary. There is NO shortage of programmers in the USA we have the skill needed here.
I read "Trump Administration Cracks" and I already had my hopes up when I read the rest in the next line.
H1B is a worthless program for America. If we have a true shortage of help ( we don't ), then we should bring in more green cards. Regardless, CONgress will keep h1b going.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The more there is a focus on the "abuse", the hardest it will be hard to everybody to get a H1B. When high-skilled people are hard to recruit, you don't get them by making the administrative burden painfuller. Breaking news: high-skilled people have got already a nice job! No incentive, no high-skilled.
Bust a few large tech companies. Find out they're underpaying people on H1Bs and make them pay up with back pay.
So the people on H1B visas get a salary increase and the tech companies lose the incentive to fire Americans and replace them with H1Bs.
Who loses in this scenario? Well the tech companies do, but it'll be hard for them to spin this as a bad thing. And unlike many will actually go bankrupt since most are sitting on enormous piles of cash.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The employer is the agency. It's no different to what Toilet & Douche, Cowboys & Lowbrows, Pricey Whorehouse or any of the others do.
There are problems with the H1B system, but this ain't one of them. Make the applicant actually have the skills requested so they can't put things on to block locals - "must be an astronaut & Olympic medallist in 17 sports, plus an Oscar" - and have the applicant own the visa so they aren't captive.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The best solution is to have a third-party do the hiring, and any firing has to be done through them, and they have no reason to let a hib in. They also have carte blanche to say "Nobody with this much experience will work at this price, you're hiring this person at $18/hour and that's final" and "Three years experience? Fuck off, we're hiring this guy with six months experience.", and only when they exhaust all candidates they will say "Fine, you can hire your goddamn hib, but we're deciding his paycheck."
... two of his three wives are foreigners. Given his track record, he might need one of those H-1B visas for the next one.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because RNC has had control of government since 2010 and BO was too naïve to push his agenda when they had control back in 2008-2009. Other than O-Care, that was it.
Trump is actually doing something I can agree with at least in principle. I don't have any issues with the H1B system per se, but I do have an issue with how a lot of companies have been openly abusing the system and no one has done anything about it.
So this brings the count of things he's done that I consider to be good to two. He is also pumping more money into space exploration, even if that's just recreating something from his childhood in sending people back to the moon. The number of technological innovations we benefited from as a result of the space program are legion.
Why not use a free-market based, fiscally conservative approach to these? Put them up for auction, and put as many up for auction until the annual purchase price per visa drops to some multiple, say 4x, of the median individual income in the US, which is $27K. So every company pays the government $108K per year per visa plus whatever they need to pay the employee. Do away with any kind of bureaucratic advertising requirement or job classification or degree requirement or anything else. And since the goal of this visa is to cover temporary gaps in skill sets, increase it by the US MII every year it is renewed for the same person. Incentivizes the company to train / hire local talent.
This will make it easy to hire talented specialists of all types (actors, athletes, software architects, general managers, physical therapists, etc) but not a bunch of code monkeys and engineers which can be easily recruited in rural America.
The govt already has a system in place to verify people before they join. Employers dont like using it as they want to hire illegals. Illegals work harder and dont make any waves as they want to fly under the radar. Look at how illegals mostly work in fields like Chicken processing or Fruit picking. These are fields where people are exploited. Software companies dont use illegals even though there is a clear demand for foreign labor. This is because software companies are more honest employers.
**Life is too short to be serious**
H1B workers are paid more than local citizens. That is ensured by the LCA process. In fact with the cost of applying for the LCA and the H1 visa , an H1 candidate costs 10K more than a local candidate and the hiring process takes 4 weeks more than it would to hire a local. People dont hire H1s because they want to, they hire them because they cant find locals.
Also H1s dont change jobs often, this is attractive to employers who are looking to have lesser attrition. This was supposed to be fixed through the AC21 act making it easier for H1s to change jobs so that employers could not just stop giving them raises but with the Trump administration's latest policies on making it difficult to change jobs we are back to the bad old days of the Clinton administration.
Infosys and Wipro must have paid huge donations to the Trump campaign. When you make an H1 a scarcity commodity , the companies holding the existing ones can make more money from it.
**Life is too short to be serious**
So many simple steps that could be taken to improve the system, like those seeking less candidates receive approval first.
> Request only 1-2 H1B's, you have top priority, 3-10 then you have second tier priority, 11-100, third tier, 100-1,000 fourth tier, 1,000+ last tier. All higher tiers are reviewed and granted prior to the next tier. That alone would shift the H1B program to a much more legitimate implementation.
> Increase salary requirement and set to inflation adjustment every 5 years.
> Random audits, all candidate resumes provided must be uploaded to the H1B visa program. Companies with a 100 or more H1B visas are randomly selected for audit and review.
> 10% tax levied per $100,000 bracket of H1B visa, the revenues directly fund programs to provide free access to STEM programs at community and state colleges. If the H1B visas are needed because there are not enough qualified candidates, than the program should help fund the qualifying of candidates.
I'll bet Mar-a-Lago didn't lose any.
The truth is, Bernie should of won. Except Hillary and the DNC flat out cheated on so many levels to prevent him from being the nominee. Americans wanted a non-establishment candidate
- Hillary Clinton, prospective nominee, expected candidate, 100% establishment, epitome of establishment and partisan politics.
- Bernie Sanders, long shot, good person, non-establishment candidate.
- Donald Trump, a jerk, major personal issues, non-establishment candidate.
Americans wanted a non-establishment candidate. Americans would have elected Bernie Sanders. Except Hillary and the DNC did everything they could to block and prevent him (including flat out cheating, providing debate questions, removing hundreds of thousands of voters from voter rolls in pro-Bernie districts, miraculous coin flips, pulling in favors from the media to downplay and hide Bernie's successes and Hillary's failures, and so much more).
The end result, DNC burned their younger demographic, showing the youth their votes don't matter. America, which wanted a anti-establishment candidate was now left with only one, Trump. The combination of a desire for anti-establishment and DNC hurting their own base resulted in what was to many, a shocking turn of events - President Trump. Yet, the result was exactly as I had predicted. All my Democrat friends who mocked me over my support of Bernie Sanders were shocked and dismayed. But I tried to explain to them, here I was, a lifelong Republican and Ron Paul supporter, and I was out there with Bernie Sanders yard signs and so was my mother. This is something that most did not understand. And folks like me, and there were quite a few, ( a lot of Ron Paul, anti-war libertarian Republicans were supporting Bernie Sanders) were NEVER going to vote for Hillary.
People like the above, are still so flabbergasted and clueless as to why their presumed perfect candidate Hillary failed to win. They have clamored for straws ever since, and latched onto the idea that somehow Russia was the deciding factor. It'd be laughable, if it weren't so sad.
Hillary lost, because she was a 100% establishment candidate who was caught using the full weight of the establishment to block the democratic process. She was the wrong candidate, at the wrong time. And a bad one at that...
It's illegal to replace qualified U.S. workers with H1B visa holders.
***
Ah, you see, we outsourced 1/2 hour work to India. So one of our job requirements along with 8 years of HTML 5 experience was the ability to speak fluent Hindi in order to communicate with our off-shore IT department.
Sadly, we couldn't find any qualified U.S. personnel to fill any of the positions.
I don't know, when I heard Trump talk about this on the campaign trail, I was mortified.
Trump and I agreed on something...
I took 10 showers to get that off me.
Still preventing H1b abuse is one thing I agree with him on, and I am glad to see him actually take steps in this direction.
Personally, I am not against the idea of the program, but there maybe needs to be different incentives. For instance, replace the lotto with a bidding program, that way the H1bs will go to places that actually pay well (with IRS backing up the pay requirement with enforcement).
You've been on the same side of the same coin...
"I've been in the company of some really skilled engineers who were here on some form of H1-B Visa"
Yes, you have. And those really skilled engineers were likely being paid an average engineering wage, where as to hire an American with the same caliber of skills, one would have to pay nearly twice as much.
Here's the big rub, Americans, can't compete with H1B visa holders. Why not? Because, education in the U.S. is too expensive. It'll cost you around a $100,000 for a Master's in Engineering. In India, what does it run, $5,000? How long does it take you to pay off $5,000 when working in the U.S. versus $100,000 + interest?
The U.S. worker, let's say with a 15 year loan at 6% interest, needs to earn an additional $10,000 more than the Indian worker just to be on par financially. And this is a factor that is never really considered when comparing and stating, well, they take the jobs that Americans won't. NO, they take jobs Americans CAN'T. And they allow corporations to continually push down wages, resulting in more jobs Americans CAN'T afford to take.
That is utter BS. We have one of the lowest levels of those receiving unemployment benefits. But workforce participation is rather low. Which means, many are unemployed, or underemployed, and have been so for prolonged states of time.
Do you know how many college degreed individuals are working menial retail jobs and part time jobs at $10/hr? Tons.
About the lowest since 2000. (Please note, that first half of the last century was a single parent workforce, thus participation was lower, because a single job could support a family.)
https://data.bls.gov/timeserie...
"They can't find locals" Absolute bullshit!
They write a local job ad knowing FULL WELL they won't find that perfect candidate. Then they apply for cheap foreign labor.
IT IS CALLED PRETEXT.
These rule changes sound sane. I just hope the anti H1-B sentiment doesn't become a witch hunt. I often see posts here making blanket statements that all H1-B visa workers are underpaid and/or underskilled. Yet I work with several H1-B immigrants who are DANG FRIEKING GOOD. They are some of the best people on the team, and they have been trying to get green cards for a while. Some of them got married here and want to buy a house and start a family. These are engineers with college degrees who are easily employable tax-paying wannabe Americans. This is how immigration keeps America great, let us not forget that.
Fix: Make a H-1b filing fee of 20% local, non-import, annual salary.
If they want to file 100,000 people, GREAT!
If the prevailing wage is $50K/yr, then $10K filing fee for each position.
If the prevailing wage is $150K/yr, then the fee is $30K.
The actual paid wage for the H-1b visa person doesn't matter, since there are already laws covering those.
As a bonus, take those fees and pay for the visa checks and everything left over go towards US citizens being retrained by accredited public colleges and universities for the specific skill that was to be filled. None of the for-profit, ripoff schools need apply.
Let me correct that for you, and describe why.
Was Trump's election helped by the Russians? The jury is out but leaning towards yes.
However the biggest contributor to Trump's success wasn't part of the Russian election interference machine. It also wasn't Trump, or anyone who was on his payroll.
The biggest contribution to Trump's victory was Hillary Clinton herself. Republicans who despised Trump went out in droves to vote against Hillary Clinton. Simultaneously a not-insignificant number of democrats who didn't like Hillary stayed home or voted for someone else. Trump stirs anger like few other politicians before him, and is skilled at weaponizing it.
I worked for a company that used e-verify and we still got raided by ICE. It turns out that we had a whole bunch of employees using stolen identities.
A few years before that the EEOC had fined them. I don't know the details on that but people were told it was because they were "trying too hard not to hire illegals".
They hit 6 plants one morning and about half the people working 2nd shift just never showed up for work ever again. It was quite a blow to the company and took them over a year to fully staff back up.
The GP is right. You can only do so much. One thing they did was to reject applicants who presented the same SSN as someone already employed which did happen.
LOL you literally read the regulations from the rulebook, trusting companies to follow it when they arent regularly checked up on. i bet you think nobody abuses unemployment or welfare either!
Why bring up Democrats? What does being a "bleeding heart" have to do the above argument? How are you unaware of the intense complaints about the problem prior to Trump? (Or did you mentally assume that anyone complaining about H1Bs being used to hire people at below-market price isn't a Democrat, in which case the answer to your question is "They did, but you couldn't tell because of cognitive bias").
If they can't get YOU or your fellow workers to accept a worse contract, they have to search around the world for someone whose situation is bad enough that they would happily accept the bad contract, because bad as it is, it's better than they have currently available where they are. So h1b's are a way to ensure that the employer can ALWAYS get an employee to accept the contract, making it appear to the idiot libertarian that it is a "free contract agreement" because no literal force was applied by the employee, only the force of needing to eat to survive.
"H1B workers are paid more than local citizens."
This is a nice assertion, but I can guarantee it's not always true. In this case if we could identify the abuse the actual stated policies might not be so bad.