Complaints Filed Over Firms Seeking H1-B Holders

Vicissidude writes "Since May, the Programmers Guild has filed 100 complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing several companies of advertising that they specifically want H-1B workers, a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act requires that U.S. jobs must be available to U.S. workers. The complaints stem from ads containing wording such as "We require candidates for H1B from India," and "We sponsor GC [green card] and we do prefer H1B holders," the Programmers Guild said. The Programmers Guild, looking for ads on major online job boards, has so far targeted only ads seeking computer programmers, the guild said. It plans to file 280 more complaints over the next six months."

Loving it

[teutonic_leech (596265)]

Yes, this has completely gone out of hand. Call it 'domestic outsourcing' if you will - the end result is the same: hardworking and highly skilled American engineers have a tougher time finding a job. The H2B visa was never meant as a carde blanche for companies to replace native qualified workers with cheaper immigrant workers. It's time to nip this in the butt once and for all - surely the companies greatly enjoy this situation and it won't change or even get worse if we let 'the free market decide'.

Re:Loving it

[theshowmecanuck (703852)]

It would be OK if this created a level playing field, but it does not (at least not when hiring foreign IT workers to work in the U.S.). Workers who are laid off on who were on a work visa need to find another job within one month or clear out of the U.S. If they find another job, the new company they work for will need to spend the money to get the sponsorship moved to them. Put together the fact that finding a job in under a month and that many companies don't want to spend the money on the lawyers fees for the sponsorship, getting laid off usually means having to leave the country. So what's it all mean? Knowing this, many times companies hire the foreign IT workers for often times less than they would pay U.S. workers, knowing that they can treat the foreign workers like indentured servants. Work hard, lots of overtime, and for less money, or we will lay you off, and you'll have to leave the country. This can be quite a hardship... and ergo no level playing field. An American employee will no longer have an income (usually) if laid off, but they don't have to immediately uproot everything and move their home overseas.

When the government gives out the H1-B they should recognize that they are really saying 'we have a shortage of IT workers'. That should mean that it shouldn't matter what company the foreign IT worker works for. I.e. if they are given a visa it should be a 6 year work visa and the worker should be free to move from company to company and stay in the U.S. for 6 years regardless of whether they are employed or not (but they should not be eligible for welfare or unemployment). That way if company A treats them like shit, they can get another job (without sponsorship hassles) at company B who will treat them better. This would provide incentive for company A to pay more and treat the employee better. This would benefit the American workers in that there would be less incentive for company A to hire the foreign worker since they will have to provide the same or similar pay and benefits as if they had just hired an American worker. Otherwise the foreign work, like an American worker, can leave for company B. Then the only business justification the American company would have to bring someone in from overseas would be if they really were more qualified in some respect than an American worker. Of course the company is then free to possibly outsource directly to China or India, but that is another matter.

My 22 cents worth... slag away at it if you want.

Re:Loving it

[arivanov (12034)]

In the UK all such taxes and Social Security contributions are payed out of a work permit holder salary regardless of the fact that the work permit holder is not entitled to any of them.

Effectively in the UK all foreign workers subsidise the native's social security budget with their contributions for 4+ years. Situation in other EU countries is not much different. The difference is only the time you are obliged to subsidise the local xenophobic skinheads who are too lazy and/or ignorant to get a permanent job so they live off state benefits instead. It is 10+ years in France, 7? (not sure) in Germany and 5+ in most other European countries.

I am not aware of all the complexities of the US tax quagmire, but I would not be surprised if it is any different. If the companies rip the off the H1B people, the state which allows it is quite likely to try to have a go at that as well. After all they are effectively a form of slaves. If they open their mouth they are chucked out of the country right away.

While for an European getting kicked out will not really matter, for most H1Bs from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc it is actually a matter of family pride. "My son has been accepted to work in theUS is a lot of kudos points for a small village or a slumland family. Being force-sent back is major strike to the family pride in some places. As a result some of these people will go to all means to stay and the fact that they are staying silent about being ripped off is not surprising.

Bottom line: We don't need H1-B workers today

[by Anonymous Coward]

In the dot-com rush of the late 1990s, yes, we needed H1-B workers because there plain simply was not enough workers. Not today. Today, any job posting made public gets hundreds of resumes. Jobs are getting filled quickly; people who have jobs in the tech field are working long hours for a fraction of what they would have made in the hight of the dot-com bubble. More and more companies are laying off workers; Sun just recently laid off 5000 workers. The US job market is weak and the H1-B workers just make it harder.

Re:Bottom line: We don't need H1-B workers today

[ClosedSource (238333)]

"In the dot-com rush of the late 1990s, yes, we needed H1-B workers because there plain simply was not enough workers. "

That was never true. H1-B workers were needed simply because salarys were beginning to rise and industry didn't want that trend to continue.

What this really is... Job tailoring?

[rsborg (111459)]

As someone who knows quite a few non-Americans on H1B, this might simply be a case of people creating jobs, so they can justify an H1B for specific people. ie, someone is already here in the US, would like a job, and the hiring manager at some company (or a friend running some body-shop consultancy) lazily writes up a job description "requiring H1B Visa"... therefore targetting the job at the friend/acquaintance that they want to hire.

I know that this "job-tailoring" is done frequently in the industry as a way of getting the exact person you know. Just that if it fits this shoe, it's quite certainly illegal... kind of like saying you want someone who is/not specific race/disabled/etc.

I, for one, hope that the hiring managers who put up such job descriptions get fired, as it's part and parcel of the corruption. Just wish we could fire them for other similar "job-tailoring" activities.

Wants the impossible

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

The Programmer's Guild actually expects to force Congress and the Courts to obey the laws they've enacted? In what Perfect World is this?

Next up: Labor-based GC 7 years?

[by Anonymous Coward]

If they are going to go after the H-1B program, maybe next they should set their sights on improving the GC process from what took, in some jurisdictions, up to 7 years, to something a lot more reasonable like 7 months, or why not 7 weeks? After all, the ridiculously lengthy GC process is just another point of abuse for foreign and hence American workers. To be fair, the process has already been "streamlined", where it now takes on average something around 3-4 years total. But, that's still far too long, and leaves people vulnerable. Perhaps the programmers guild would like to see this shortened so they they decrease the abuses and increases their membership?

It never ceases to amaze me how, globally, we have virtually free movement of capital, a moderately free movement of goods, but a heavily restricted movement of people. The three major components of the economy have dramatically different levels of restrictions depending on how the given component cuts between the wealthy and the working "classes".

Who wants a lightening fast immigration system? Not the employers...that's for sure. And yet, overall, that would arguably be best for the overall economy.

"It turns out the so-called free market isn't quite so free, if you're a worker bee".

They took err jeerbs!

[smclean (521851)]

They took err jeeerbs!! But seriously, the perception about H1-B holders being needed to supplement the supposed lack of American training is, to me, rather insulting. Maybe I have too high an estimation of myself and my peers, but it seems to me that the US is pretty rich with technical talent. Trying to dilute the marketplace with indentured servants certainly is not going to help us get paid our due, or motivate us to earn it.

War on drugs strategy

[Baldrson (78598)]

The war on drugs didn't get serious until it starte confiscating the assets of drug lords.

Confiscate the assets of the businesses illegally lowering wages via violation of the law.

An old scheme

[CaroKann (795685)]

About a decade ago, when I was fresh out of college and trying to find a programming job, one of the resources I used was the local employment office. While I was going over a list of jobs with the employment office guy, I noticed some jobs I thought I should try for and asked about them. The guy told me that I was wasting my time, that it was a dishonest company, and that I had no chance of getting hired. He explained to me how that particular company only wanted to hire an HB1 visa employee, and that they only listed the job with the employment office because the law requires that they must make an effort to hire an American first. Every American that applies for the job will be found wanting, and, their legal obligations satisified, the company will then proceed to hire an HB1 employee. I was willing to work anywhere at that time, so I tried anyway, and of course i did not get the job.

That's only one of the schemes I've encountered while looking for work. The job market can be a scummy place.

Changes Nothing

[omegashenron (942375)]

Even though future employers may get a slap on the wrist for the way in which they advertise positi0ons, it will not (and can not) change their hiring policies. All this is going to do is be a waste of time for companies (ie interviewing/processing applications from unwanted candidates) and for the individual applying for the job (writing letters, e-mails, phone calls etc to a company that has no intent of hiring you).

Yes it does suck and is discriminatory, however in the land of free enterprise what can you do? Mandate they hire Americans? Easy solution for the company, off shore the jobs.

Things you should know about H1-B

[ax_1225 (955097)]

The vast majority of the companies will not hire H1-B workers. Why? Because it's a PITA especially for small and medium companies. All the legal trouble and fees and restrictions are just too much hassle for most companies.

Also it is good to know there are minimum salary levels for the H1-B workers. A company can't hire a senior programmer from outside of US and pay 20k per year. This doesn't mean that some companies might not abuse the system and try different tricks to get cheaper work force but I really belive that the majority of H1-B workers came in US because companies couldn't find qualified people.

The truth is that there aren't many good programmers out there and there is still a lot of demand for them. I see many programmers coming for interviews at the company I work for and when someone good arrives (not very often) it is very difficult to get them as they already have several offers from other companies.

BTW I am also a H1-B worker and I'm payed a competitive salary and the company also pays a lot of legal fees for my H1-B and green card. Besides that I pay income taxes and spend all my money here in the US. America has a lot to win from the H1-B program.

Nothing's changed here in 20 years...

[smilindog2000 (907665)]

In 1986, I got a job after graduating from Berkeley with a BS in EECS for $29,500/year. The last hire I made that I'd consider comparable was an Indian student from a state university with a masters. We hired him for $60K/year. I checked out this site for inflation rates:

http://eh.net/hmit/compare/ [eh.net]

In short, a smart engineer with a college degree makes the same today as he did 20 years ago. Even back then, half engineers I graduated with were Indian or Chinese. It's no different today.

Sure, we engineers have to compete globally, which makes us poorer on average than doctors and lawyers. I's still rather be an engineer.

The first month after taking that first job, I was approached by communist picketers outside my workplace. They were pushing for unions, and higher wages. These Programmers Guild people are no different. It was a bad idea then, just as it is now.

Auction them off

[cfulmer (3166)]

So, industry claims that H1-B visas are needed because there are some skills which are just not available in the U.S. job market. The other side is that (1) yes, those skills are; and (2) even if they weren't, companies could hire Americans and train them.

The visas are obviously in high demand -- they disappear in an astonishingly short time after they become available every year.

IMO, the best way to approach this is to auction the H1-B visas off: If you have a position that you need filled, bid for an H1-B visa. If somebody else needs it more, they'll bid more and they'll win. Otherwise, if you need it more, you'll bid more and win.

The interesting thing is the feedback mechanism -- if the visas are going for $200,000 each, that's a pretty good indication that the job isn't availble in the US and it's really hard to train Americans to do it. But, on the other hand, if companies are just trying to save a few bucks, then the visas will go for a lot less, maybe $20,000. That would indicate that there are too many H1-B visas, and companies are just using them to get cheap labor. If the price is too high, that would indicate the need to raise the cap. Otherwise, it would indicate a need to lower it.+

Re:USian Terminology

[Marxist Hacker 42 (638312)]

In America, we have different classes of Visas available for different reasons. H-1b is INTENDED to allow American companies to hire people with Master's degrees or better who have skillsets not available in America. In practice, it's used to bring in as many Bachelor's Degree holders as possible every year to drive wages down in highly skilled jobs. It's so popular that businesses actually run out of these visas within a few minutes of them becoming available every year. Current cap is 65,000 per Federal Fiscal Year- they're usually gone by 20 minutes after midnight on the first of October.

The big part is that these visas were originally sold as having *no* effect on US employment- after all, the skillsets are supposed to be completely unavailable in the United States, and no way to train anybody in that skillset. In practice though- well, you see some of the quotes from advertising for these jobs.

Re:Don't have to discriminate to be cheapassed...

[by Anonymous Coward]

They don't just want to pay less, they want a carte blanche to treat their employees like crap. An H1-B visa worker will put up with a lot more abuse from an employer since they depend on the employer to keep them in the country. This is the evolution of the idea of preferring people with families to single workers. The theory is, if they have a family, they also have a mortgage, car payments, college tuition, etc... to provide for their family, making it much less likely they will up and quit if the employer treats them unfairly.

IEEE-USA, Unions, Milton Friedman speak up

[by Anonymous Coward]

The IEEE [ieeeusa.org] , Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO [blogspot.com] and researhers such as Norm Matloff [ucdavis.edu] speak up against the H-1B abuse.

Lots of folks speak up against it.

The hired gun lobbyist Harris Miller loses to Jim Webb [computerworld.com]. Miller ran an unaplogetic pro H-1B and pro-outsourcing campaign. Seems the voters in Virginia don't like Harris Miller's record.

Heck, even Milton Friedman calls it a subsidy [computerworld.com].

Re:Some more info

[pla (258480)]

I'm not sure what the Programmer's Guild does, other than make a big stink about H-1B visas.

Might I suggest going to, say, their web site [programmersguild.org] and reading the plain-English ByLaws [programmersguild.org] page? In particular, "ARTICLE 3 - PURPOSE", which contains a bulleted list of, well, what they do.


but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?

Follow the money... Who benefits by driving down the cost of competant IT work? Hint - not "everybody but IT workers", because when we have money, we spend it as though the apocalypse will happen tomorrow.


As for whether or not companies really engage in such reprehensible hiring practices, you need look no further than the employment section of your local paper. See the tiny, unappealing buzzword-laden ads for experienced coders, paying a third the going rate in your area? Those companies will not get responses from anyone but interns. They can then claim they couldn't find anyone to take the job despite "honestly" trying, and can then hire H1Bs.

Regardless of your opinion of outsourced labor, I don't think anyone would consider such transparent tactics as anything but a legal farce.



wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?

While IT people may have extremely well-organized personal lives (social and desktop notwithstanding), we don't tend to organize into larger bodies. The "I" in "INTP/INTJ" doesn't stand for "I likes large crowds".

Re:Some more info

[Tablizer (95088)]

but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried...

Often it is not. There are many wiggly loopholes. Examples from my old blog:

# Resume Templating - Add every skill that a given H-1B candidate has on his/her resume into the "needed skills" line of the application form. That way the "needs" profile will never match a citizen above the probability of winning the Instant Millionaire lottery. Government inspectors are usually too overworked and/or not knowledgeable enough to check and follow-up on actual skills used on the job, especially if there are more than a few. (This approach was also covered in another message.)

# Undocumented Experience - Claim a highly experienced H-1B applicant is really only a beginner, and thus a company gets experience at beginner rates. Inspectors cannot realistically check somebody's skill background as obtained inside a foreign country. If they do find out, claim you didn't know. Just make sure the experience is not on your "official" copy of the visa worker's resume. It is an easy lie to get away with.

# Take Advantage of Situation - Work the H-1B overtime or weekends without extra pay. Complaining risks getting the H-1B sent home, so they usually keep quiet. Plus, they may not understand how our legal system works or be intimidated by a process foreign to them. (US money is worth more to them due to exchange rates when they eventually go back home, and thus they often just live with labor abuses without complaint in order reduce risk while obtaining their financial nest-egg.)

# Tinker with Titles - Information technology (IT) titles are often vague, inconsistent, and overlapping. It is hard to penalize a company for using the wrong IT title on an application form because there practically is no such thing as an objectively "wrong title" in IT. Plus, most IT work involves a mixture of a lot of different skills, such as programming, analysis, debugging, customer support, documentation, etc. There are no consensus metrics for categorizing these based on ratios or percentage of usage.

# Outsource the Buck - A big company can contract the H-1B from a small, fly-by-night company that keeps a portion of an H-1B's pay, delays paychecks, does not pay overtime, etc. The big company that contracts out is then not exposed to the risk of dubious activity. They can claim that they did not know the contractor was abusing the visa workers (and may not know). Such small contracting companies are often staffed by people from the H-1B's originating country such that if they are caught or risk being caught, the company folds up and goes back to their home country where they can do other business. The risk of real penalties is very small. (Cross-country white-collar crime investigation tends to be poorly coordinated between countries involved.)

# Shred Citizen Resumes - Companies applying for visas are required to place an ad in a typical job listings source and review received resumes or applications for qualified citizens. Government inspectors may ask to see such resumes. However, if somebody takes citizens resume and shreds them, nobody besides the shredder will ever know they existed.

# Lopsided Interviews - Government inspectors don't sit through most live interviews. Thus, a company trying to weed out citizens can simply ask tough questions when interviewing the citizen, but be easy on the visa candidate.

Re:Some more info

[NormalVisual (565491)]

And then there's the method preferred by a previous employer of mine - have a Sri Lankan CEO that has good buddies in the Sri Lankan IT services industry, and mysteriously have people shipped in without even having posted the openings. When I started there, our department had four Americans, one Pakistani, and one Bulgarian. The Pakistani and Bulgarian both were U.S. citizens. Five years later when I left, we had four Americans (3 good people, 1 basket case), two Pakistanis (one H1-B) who were a little above average, one Indian who was largely useless (H1-B), and IIRC, 7 Sri Lankans (all H1-B, all pretty decent). I personally handed in no less than five resumes of qualified locals that I knew for two of positions that *were* advertised, and not a single one was contacted. "Qualified" meaning they had the required skills (and I could personally vouch for their competence), most of the "good to have" skills, were available, and were willing to work for industry standard wages. The "industry standard wages" part was the kicker - I found out later at least two of the Sri Lankans were working for a little more than half of what I was, when their experience and abilities warranted pay on par with mine. They had also told me that they were bound to the company by restrictive contracts that would end up costing them thousands of dollars if they left, but felt that they had to do it if they wanted to eventually get a green card.

The H1-B program is a joke. It's often not fair to the Americans that get displaced, and it's often not fair to the visa holders, who in my experience can end up in situations resembling indentured servitude. The only parties that consistently benefit from it are those unscrupulous companies who aren't willing to follow the law, since the government does next to nothing to enforce the requirements placed on employers.

Re:Some more info-Back slash.

[OrangeSpyderMan (589635)]

I only care about the country I was born in. The rest of the world can die in nuclear fire as far as I care.

And there was I about to feel sorry for you....

Re:Who cares?

[Aadain2001 (684036)]

"The people I do see this hurting is entry level candidates but even so if you can prove you are worth your salt you will find a nice job."

Ah-ha! There is the real damage being done to not only our economy, but our society as a whole! The idea that it's ok to fill entry level positions with cheap foreign labor/workers it a cancer on our society. Those entry level positions may not be that important, but you learn a lot in those jobs, especially right out of college. If you can't get real world experience, how will you ever get that "nice job"? Get a friend to tailor a job for you in a position you have zero experience with? Fake it on your resume and hope they don't find out? If you do not have entry level positions for those graduating from college, they will never mature into experience programmers/engineers and we'll have to pull from the H-1B visa holders again for the experienced positions. After all, they were the ones in the entry level positions, they got the experience, so they should get the jobs at the next level too. Soon even the most experienced positions will be available for foreign replacement. And where will you be then? In the unemployment line or busing tables like the rest of us educated types who never got our careers off the ground because there were no entry level positions for us.

Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor

[FooAtWFU (699187)]

Because economics has become warfare- and unless you want to be forced to worship Krishna, there's a reason why we have national sovereignity.

Wow. This, sir, is truly a most unusual juxtaposition of viewpoints. I'll go so far as to say it's perhaps the most unusual one I've ever seen.

But let me say this. My dad is an award-winning economist (Jonathan Hughes Prize, actually) and he's a good man, and I've taken an introductory class myself, though it's been a while. Still, I know a few things. Economics is a science. It has laws. True, they are not as solid as the Laws Of Physics, but they're just as true. And the truth is that free markets, by and large, make peoples' lives better, not worse. Your rhetoric about how "markets never did any good for anybody" is extremism of the most ridiculous and absurd variety. What did help people then? Sustanance farming? People don't trade in a market , whether they're trading corn or computers or labor or lemons, unless both parties gain something. You may groan about your soul-sucking job, but the fact is that you'd be far worse off without it.

My father has argued that free trade is a fundamental human right: If someone in Cuba has something to sell me, and I want to buy it, what business has anyone stopping us? Anything else is simply coercing us. You argue "protectionism!" to build a strong local economy. Why must it be local? Are the people overseas less deserving of jobs, and the progress of the modern world? Ah, I am sure you will argue about "what progress?" and tell us of how they are so terribly exploited and make only sixty cents a day in a factory - but you have missed the alternative, that they were making the equivalent of thirty cents a day doing sustainence farming beforehand. Ah, you will say, but the companies, the evil companies of course, they are going to pass all the savings along to the CEOs, those rich evil bastards. In a truly free market, though, another company will gladly spring up doing the exact same thing, but NOT pay the CEOs a bunch of money, until the other company goes out of business (or changes).

Markets are not there to make your life better. They are there to make everybody's lives better. If it comes down to it, assuming you still have Free Will, you can always choose to exclude yourself - if you're willing to pay the price. But then- maybe the price is too high, maybe the government demands taxes or such beyond your ability to pay. But that's outside of the market. That's government.

Moreover, economics - many think it's the study of money. It's not. It's the study of choices. That's all a market is- a set of choices. People associate Economics with Money because Money is the easiest sort of choice to quantify, the easiest to measure, the easiest to analyze. Recognize that to economists, everything is a market unless it's coersion. You're not in favor of coersion for every little thing, are you? If you think people should have any sort of choice in anything they do, you are supporting a market. And I hope you're not aiming for totalitariansim in your politics, especially not intentionally. I'd like to think better of you than that.

I'd love to work in the USA for a while

[Harald Paulsen (621759)]

I don't know about other people, but I live in Norway and one of my dreams is to get a H-1B visa and work in the USA for 6-24 months to improve my english and have something nice on my resumé. Then I'd return to my own wonderful country with lots of experience and some great memories.