Infosys Fined $35M For Illegally Bringing Programmers Into US On Visitor Visas 201
McGruber writes "The U.S. government fined Infosys $35 million after an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department found that the Indian company used inexpensive, easy-to-obtain B-1 visas meant to cover short business visits — instead of harder-to-get H-1B work visas — to bring an unknown number of its employees for long-term stays. The alleged practice enabled Infosys to undercut competitors in bids for programming, accounting and other work performed for clients, according to people close to the investigation. Infosys clients have included Goldman Sachs Group, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. Infosys said in an email that it is talking with the U.S. Attorney's office, 'regarding a civil resolution of the government's investigation into the company's compliance' with employment-record 'I-9 form' requirements and past use of the B-1 visa. A company spokesman, who confirmed a resolution will be announced Wednesday, said Infosys had set aside $35 million to settle the case and cover legal costs. He said the sum was 'a good indication' of the amount involved."
Re:Big deal (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a pretty easy cure for all of this...
Just re-write the H1-B laws so that all H1-B workers must be paid 20% more than industry standard for the region or area the job is located in. That, or have a 20-40% premium on each worker's salary paid by the hiring company as an excise tax.
I bet that shit would stop cold right away.
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a pretty easy cure for all of this...
Just re-write the H1-B laws so that all H1-B workers must be paid 20% more than industry standard for the region or area the job is located in. That, or have a 20-40% premium on each worker's salary paid by the hiring company as an excise tax.
I bet that shit would stop cold right away.
It isn't enough. A lot of the draw of H1B is the lack of mobility. Let them freely change jobs and allow them to have a 1 year grace period between jobs if they've been in their first job for a year.
Are you really really surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hint: I am in India, though I do not work for "Indian" company.
All my friends in TCS, Infosys, Wipro etc., went to US through B1 route if the duration was less than 2-3 months. B1 Visa explicitly forbids working, but is for meetings and stuff.
Yet they went on customer sites etc.,
They are even trained to give specific answers to Immigration and say a lot about meetings and stuff. Some are even booked as members on cheap conferences spaced 15-20 days apart so it all looks like the real deal.
These companies are unethical scum, and due to their bottom feeding attitude, they have spoilt the reputation of the "Indian software Engineer". The world now views the Indian software engineer as a low cost labour intensive guy fit for only data entry with the help of a spell checker.
That brush gets broadly applied to us product design software engineers doing real software work, and getting 2-3X the salary the bottom feeders pay.
Speaking of ethics, employees of these companies take their Earned or Paid leave, and then come to office, so that do not lose out the govt sop of leave travel allowance. But any actual leave is hard to come by unless you are on bench.
During their foreign stints, they were forced to handover any allowance in lue of extra working hours given to them by the employer(some US employers used to give sops) to their parent company.
If you are hiring a cheap bottom feeder from India, all I can say is "All the best". The low quality work will blow up in your face 1-2 years from now, and no amount of patchwork will fix it.
Then you will go to a bar after your layoff and lament how you only get cheap unskilled monkeys from India. But the fact is you are the retard who went bottom feeding and found only slime.