Report Indicates Widespread H-1B Visa Fraud 397
Vrst1013 notes a Business Week account of a government report examining fraud in the H-1B program. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services just released a report to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee examining issues with fraud and technical violations within this program. Based on a sample size of 246 H-1B petitions, 13.4 percent showed fraud and 7.3 percent showed technical violations, for an overall violation rate of 20.7 percent. There was slso evidence of payment below the prevailing wage, offers of non-existent jobs, and fraudulent documentation. "'The report makes it clear that the H-1B program is rife with abuse and misuse,' says Ron Hira, [a professor] at the Rochester Institute of Technology ... However, both Presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, have said they support expanding the program."
It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm continually amazed at the H1B visa issue.
Took me 5 min's to come up with a reasonable solution to the issues.
Original Problem: Some companies need skilled employee's that are not available in the US.
Created problems: Many companies like hiring folks from elsewhere because even with associated costs of the visa and transportation it's still a huge cost savings over paying US wages for the same work.
Solution: Have a relatively unlimited pool of available H1B visa's. With the provision that anyone hired must be paid 110% of the prevailing US wage for the work.
That way if they really need skills not available they can get them but there is a real financial incentive to use local talent.
Ward
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently, the provision is that they must be paid the prevailing wage, i.e. 100% of US worker. The problem is that the "prevailing wage" is a vague term given the variety of skills and experience candidate might have for a given position. Why do you think that extra 10% would make a difference?
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that the root of the "prevaling wage" problem is a complete lack of enforcement. There is zero budget for oversight - even the funding for this study took over a decade of bitching by the little guys before it was included in the law. I'm surprised anything actually came of it, much less getting enough publicity to be duped on slashdot.
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Exactly, there is that enforcement thing. Give the ICE folks some work to do.
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Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Interesting)
Everything in that video is true, but you are not interpreting it correctly. The real problem is that this bizarre process is the only way to get permanent residence for a skilled worker, other than marrying an American.
After working for my employer for 5 years on an H-1B visa, they started processing my green card. They know I am qualified, I have experience in this position, I get along with my coworkers and I am familiar with some of their trade secrets. Of course, at this point they are not interested in hiring anyone else, American or otherwise, for my position.
The law ends up having the effect that my company now needs to hire lawyers to go through this ridiculous process. This doesn't prove that they don't have legitimate reasons to want to keep me around. If they find a good candidate in the process, they will probably try to hire him for another position. They would still have to come up with a reason why he is not a good replacement for my position specifically (my company was hiring programmers at the time).
You probably don't fully appreciate how absurd this game can get. The lawyers try to post a list of requirements that is very specific, but not too specific because otherwise the Department of Labor may reject the application. Over the years, the lawyers get a sense for what they can ask for. For instance, I have a masters, but they couldn't require this in the ads because I don't have managerial responsibilities (you need to use lawyer logic to understand what I just said).
If the result of all this is not the desired one, my company loses a worker that will be very hard to replace and I get to sell my house, break up with my American fiancee and move back to Europe. Well, that or I could marry in a hurry just to get the green card; but you probably wouldn't approve of that either. I guess the "upside" is that some mediocre American programmer would have an improved chance of being hired by my company because good programmers just got a little harder to find.
The report says that 13.4% of the applications show fraud, and I don't know what to make of the 7.3% with "technical violations" (Did they spell their name inconsistently? Did they not hand in some documentation in time?). In any case, most of us are legit. I can see why you would have issues with the fraudsters, not with all of us.
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Insightful)
The root cause of the problem you describe is that H1B visas are in the family of "non-immigrant" visas which means they are not intended as a stepping stone to citizenship, even though in practice that's the way 90%+ of applicants see them.
My personal opinion is that not only should they be switched to being an official immigrant visa, but immigration should be mandatory. If H1B holders really are so smart and so rare as their employers attest when hiring them, then obviously we need them in this country more than almost any other group of aliens. So bring them in, maybe even make them post a bond of like $10K that is forfeited if they don't get a green card in 5 years.
I'm not sure about that last point without thinking it through some more, I don't want it to become a club which unscrupulous employers can use to hold back the immigrant or otherwise hold down wages. But I do want to make it less desirable for people to come to the USA for 5-10 years and then move back to their country of origin, taking their money and their skills with them. Historically the USA has been the beneficiary of a world-wide brain-drain and I think we ought to do everything we can maintain that phenomenon.
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Maybe I'm in the other 10% then. I think it would be fun to live in New York for a couple of years and then come back here to London. To do that I probably need an H-1B although maybe there are alternatives.
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Maybe I'm in the other 10% then. I think it would be fun to live in New York for a couple of years and then come back here to London. To do that I probably need an H-1B although maybe there are alternatives.
L1 visa, its not quite as flexible as the H1B but it is also a non-immigrant visa.
And, to be blunt, visas are for the benefit of the host nation, as a foreign citizen what you want isn't particularly relevant.
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Informative)
It's extremely, EXTREMELY, unfortunate that you were modded informative for bringing up a YouTube video which has nothing to do with the H1-B process...
You want to be up in arms about something? How about the following:
Step 1. Get hired by a company as an H1-B because you're the best qualified person for this job.
Step 2. Work for six years for this company. Perform well. Get promoted once or twice. Eventually take a leadership position.
Step 3. The company, wanting to keep you because by now you've become invaluable to them, wants to help you get your green card.
Step 4. Advertise your position as if they were willing to get rid of you the next day and replace you by a new hire.
Step 5. Continue with the green card process.
Can you spot some retarded-ness somewhere in this process? If so, join the ranks of the people who are outraged about the sheer fucking stupidity of the U.S. immigration process. You'll be in the company of H1-Bs like me and of companies who are trying to retain their top talent.
(And in case you're not getting it: the PERM process decried in that video? That's Step 4.)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
If the skilled worker program needs to be changed, then so be it. But at the moment, it was designed as a time-limited work visa and isn't advertised by the government as a way to attain citizenship. If your employer indicated otherwise, then you were duped. If you hoped otherwise, then it's unfortunate for you. It doesn't mean you should be indignant about it.
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I told you guys the solution already: All IT folk should form into medieval-style guilds. Then, when any employers pull this shit, we get to dump boiling oil on the CEOs.
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except that unions don't get to dump boiling oil on CEOs.
I think I like this guild idea.
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A union of boiling oil and CEOs.
Deep-fried CEOs.
Sounds good on paper, but no one would like
the smell because the CEOs are all full of shit.
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Funny)
You don't understand.
In C a union of boiling oil and CEOs means that in some place you might have a bunch of CEOs, but it also may be a vat of boiling oil, and there is no way to check.
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, there is occasional enforcement of the prevailing wage requirement (see below). Tack on another 10% fee to fund enforcement, add a H1-B Czar and make violations a felony and I think we would be good to go.
Labor Violation
R Square, a company that provides IT services to large and mid-sized companies, has agreed to pay $95,711 to 12 non-immigrant workers, according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Department of Labor reports that an investigation turned up the fact that R Square had underpaid computer professionals between July, 2006, and July, 2007. "This case demonstrates our commitment to enforce the H-1B provisions which guard against employers undercutting American workers by underpaying temporary foreign workers," Pat Reilly, district director of the Wage and Hour division's southern New Jersey office, said in a prepared statement.
Officers of the company, which has its offices at 5 Independence Way, were not available for comment by press time.
R Square, 5 Independence Way, Suite 150, , Princeton 08540; 609-520-8204; fax, 609-520-8204. Anil Kumar. Home page: www.r-square.com.
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Plus, increased value in areas with to few people would create more interest by people looking to move up in pay scale.
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Not if all the consumers of said resource (employers) decide to work the angles in the system in such a way that the value of said resource is minimized, in terms of compensation. IOW, if everyone treats them like shit, they can all get away with it. It's not like they can just quit and find another job, they get deported if they do.
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that the "prevailing wage" is a vague term given the variety of skills and experience candidate might have for a given position.
Not only that, but what the employer says that the H1B employee is paid officially on the pay stub and what they are actually paid, usually due to mandatory unpaid overtime, are often two different things entirely. What is an H1B going to do, complain? If they say anything then the company will fire them and jerk their sponsorship so fast that their heads will still be spinning when their butts get kicked all the way back to their countries of origin. The H1Bs are lucky to be here, they know it and the company knows it, and thus they will put up with a lot more abuse, much more than most US Citizens would put up with, just to keep their jobs and remain here in the United States.
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Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of the H-1B's that I've worked with have been bright, intelligent, and talented individuals with skillsets not easily available in my market.
Then you have been fortunate, but a substantial portion of the 65,000+ H1B slots available in the United States do fall victim to the sort of abuses previously described. The temptation to "get their money's worth" from an employee with less recourse than a comperable American citizen is simply irresistable to many companies. I myself worked previously at a company (no longer work there) where at least two (2) of the staff, a washed up mechanical engineer and another who lied about being an algorithm developer on his H1B application (both from Pakistan...this was before 9/11), were basically being worked lots of overtime as telephone help desk support. Now granted, that was probably an pretty bad situation whereas you had a pretty good situation and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but the cracks in the H1B system are well known and frequently exploited if my first hand experience and the second hand experiences of others are to be believed.
It's the people that come over on the H1B program that we most need to encourage to immigrate, they are smart people who will raise the standard of living in the US.
That is true in theory, but the present H1B system leaks like a sieve and too many of the existing slots are being taken up by opportunistic foreigners who overstate their qualifications (they will do or say anything to get into the United States even if they have to lie through their teeth, they don't care) and the employers who bring them in (they don't care if they waste a spot that some other company, perhaps their competitor, really needs for a REAL qualified engineer). This is part of the reason why there is so much pressure every year to raise the H1B cap, because many of the slots are wasted and those companies who actually want to use the H1B program for the intended purpose find themselves unable to because other less scrupulous companies have wasted some of the slots by bringing in under qualified foreign personel to work low level IT jobs that could easily be filled by even half way competent Americans.
The reality is that for the programmer type jobs that so many rail against the employer will outsource the project if they can't find or import enough talent at the right price to complete the project on time and on budget.
Then perhaps that is what they should do, since an American isn't going to get the job anyway and the existing H1B program has shown itself to be rife with abuses. I understand what the H1B program is supposed to accomplish, but one of the great mistakes is to judge a program or policy based upon its intentions rather than its actual results. The H1B system should either be fixed so that only qualified personel are admitted after an American could not be found to do the job or the job should be outsourced. Right now companies place fake job postings on job boards with impossibly long lists of qualifications that almost no human being could meet, just to meet the statutory requirement that no American fit the bill (of course, the H1B they eventually import doesn't match those qualifications either, but nobody actually checks up on that once the application has been approved). They make sure that their job posting fails to find an American candidate because they have already made up their minds, before even posting that they don't want to hire an American for the job. That is just one further example of the perverse sorts of incentives created by the present H1B program.
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The problem is that the "prevailing wage" is a vague term given the variety of skills and experience candidate might have for a given position.
The problem with the idea behind prevailing wage is that there is no enforcement of duties performed based on job title. So when a company once to pay people less they hire them as an Software Engineer I and have them do Software Engineer III or IV work. This allows companies to pay considerably less than a true prevailing wage. This happens to US workers as well, but at least in those cases the employee is free to move to other jobs or just quit without fear of deportation.
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:4, Insightful)
Your created problem: Companies wills simply build overseads campuses and employ them there. Oh wait, that's already happening.
There is no way around this. Our societies will equalize. There is no justification for the average American earning 10X what another person doing an equivalanet job earns. Things will fix themselves. Either by devaluation of the dollar or by direct wage cuts.
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no justification for the average American earning 10X what another person doing an equivalanet job earns.
Yes and no. It really depends on geographic supply, demand, and cost of transportation. Also, I have to ask, why does this have to be due to the dollar declining instead of lower valued currencies increasing to the value of the dollar, or wages raising to American levels? It's not like the USA is the only country with multimillionaires and high-wage jobs (the world's richest man is a Mexican for crying out loud).
inequality is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies are merely exploiting this. Take away the inequality, and they will have no situation to exploit. I am not afraid to compete for jobs on a level playing field. I've asked a few H1Bs whether they were being exploited, and they all said no. But I suppose that's about the same as asking a prostitute whether she willingly chose her line of work. On the other hand, that's a kind of can't win question of the "does this dress make me look fat?" sort.
The first inequality is the terms of H1B employm
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There is no justification for the average American earning 10X what another person doing an equivalanet job earns.
Yes there is: that's what it takes to attract that person in a particular market. It's the government's job to be somewhat protective of their citizens and not license the importation of cheap labor. It's not like there's a shortage of IT workers.
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Even easier:
Any employer must pay a 50% payroll tax (as opposed to the normal 7.5%) for all H1B employees, with a further provision that all H1B paychecks be issued through the INS, with the employer paying the agency the full amount of the paycheck, plus a handling fee.
Any violations of prevailing wage shall be a felony, with a mandatory minimum sentence of 5-years.
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Having been on an H1B, that's not too far from what happened. My employer refused to let me take any deductions on my W2 due to my status. Also, it should be noted, that H1B workers pay full social security and FICA taxes but aren't actually eligible to any of the benefits, so they are in fact subsidizing American employees.
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It's clear from your logic that you will NEVER be elected to public office. You just don't seem to have the 'team player' attitude.
Clearly, if politics were left out of this process and all aspects of hiring non-local talent were held up transparently for inspection by local groups representing workers there would be no abuses or problems that news stories and a lawsuit could not fix. The problem is that now politics ARE involved... not even Spiderman or Batman can fix this. Time to scrap the whole thing an
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as how to fix this situation, as somebody suggested below, mandating 100% of pay is of no use without a decent enforcement in place. Increasing legal immigration there by reducing the wage pressures is one way to go. Increasing the scrutiny at the point of origination where this H1B was granted is another better way to go. Mostly it comes down to better enforcement. But USCIS is so busy chasing orange pickers from Florida and Chicken slaughterers from Iowa, the unscrupulous H1B shell companies keep getting away most of the time.
Note: If you think H1B is "fraud", then you really don't know about L1 "fraud". It's even more worse and there are no limits to L1 visas.
Note to Note: To all those people who think I am here not paying taxes and sending all my earnings to India/China/Philippines wherever, we all pay FULL taxes including Social Security and Medicare, even though I am not eligible to use those services until I get a green card.
There are more problems than that to H-1B (Score:4, Interesting)
Here are two other problems:
1. No medical checks until the very end of the (optional) green card process. Presumably, an employee running around with TB could be spreading it for years without knowing who it was. Bad for US citizens and lawful aliens. A medical exam should be completed prior to entry into the country.
2. Lack of grace period upon job loss. I'm expected to leave in 10 days flat. If you have an apartment full of stuff, it's kinda tough to pull it all together in that timeframe, lest the BCIS agents come to take you away.
3. Lack of typical state benefits upon job loss. If I lose my job, I pay into unemployment but I'm not allowed to collect even to get back what I paid in. Furthermore, I can't collect unemployment from my home country. That means I need to stash money away for that contingency that I could've used elsewhere.
The solution is an indexed and independently audited visa system whereby visa holders get a provisional permanent green card pending medical, educational and experience qualifications at a rate that doesn't exceed the displacement of professionals already in the country above NAIRU, applicant-funded with additional funds set aside automatically for otherwise standard benefits of a citizen. This is the problem that Canada has in dumping a bunch of people from other countries into the workforce where there are already too few tech jobs (although Canada's bigger problem is where professionals can't be credentialed and end up having a worse standard of living than back in their home country driving a taxi).
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Of course I don't blame the workers for the fraud. You are simply looking for the best opportunity possible for yourself and your family. Immigrants are what makes this country great. We attract the best and the brightest. Most end up staying permanently (if possible).
A side benefit is the large number of Indian immigrants in my area has made it very easy to get excellent curry!
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm continually amazed at the H1B visa issue.
Took me 5 min's to come up with a reasonable solution to the issues.
Original Problem: Some companies need skilled employee's that are not available in the US.
Created problems: Many companies like hiring folks from elsewhere because even with associated costs of the visa and transportation it's still a huge cost savings over paying US wages for the same work.
Solution: Have a relatively unlimited pool of available H1B visa's. With the provision that anyone hired must be paid 110% of the prevailing US wage for the work.
That way if they really need skills not available they can get them but there is a real financial incentive to use local talent.
Ward
Sorry, "prevailing wage" and "skilled" are weasel words. Your solution does not solve that.
Better solution: stop using a lottery and start using an auction to distribute the visas.
Re:It's not so blasted difficult... (Score:5, Insightful)
a better solution would be that the employee is not tied to the employer, once in US he/she can freely transfer his visa to any other company. this way they will be forced to play at the market wages and use the h1-b program when they truly cannot find local talent.
sorry too late in night to worry punctuations and proper case.
Posessive s (Score:2)
It's "visas", "mins" and "employees". It really is a shame that you don't know your native language. People would probably take you seriously if you did.
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though. I'm not opposed to immigration in itself, after all, one of the things that America has consistently gained from is being able to attract skilled and/or motivated people from all over(and, I can't ethically get behind the "America is the land of opportunity for anybody who immigrated before date X, after date X, all immigrants are damn dirty foreigners" type arguments). What I am opposed to is horrid compromise structures that don't work all that well, and provide huge incentives for fraud. If we want immigration, let's reform the process by which people can apply for and obtain legal residency and, ideally, eventually citizenship. If we don't, then let's be straightforward about forbidding it. A bullshit half measure where corporations get to import quasi-indentured labor who are on a sorta-kinda-not-really track to naturalization is the worst of both worlds. All the stuff about immigration that makes nativist labor types nervous, without the benefits of attracting and naturalizing the best, brightest, and most motivated.
It's not just the corporations who abuse it. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just the corporations who abuse H-1B visas. Virtually all, save a few, of the people brought over on them are useless.
I was at one company who employed fifteen of these people at one point. All of them were very misleading when describing their abilities and experience, and thus were virtually useless to us. If anything, they actually caused us more problems that they ever solved by the mere fact that the code they wrote was pure shit.
They were all from different universities and other academic institutions in India, so it's not like they were from a particularly bad school. Likewise, they were of different ages.
Our main problem was that many of them claimed to be familiar with Java development on Solaris, but the closest experience they actually had was VB.NET on Windows. Some of those fellows even had a cheat sheet translating common VB.NET constructs to Java (albeit incorrectly, in many cases). The others just pestered our North American and European developers with questions and problems that even an intern would be able to quickly solve on their own.
It's a great idea to bring the best and the brightest to America. It'll be great for our economy. The problem is, the existing programs bring over complete shit, who in turn harm our productivity terribly.
Re:It's not just the corporations who abuse it. (Score:4, Insightful)
The H1-B system works just fine as a transition for entry level employees that studies in the US. Practical training visas don't cover enough time to handle the long initial green card period, so they get extended into H1-Bs, which will let them continue to work for you.
Picking a random, experienced H1-B straight from India, China or Europe is no different than trying to hire an experienced programmer: It's very difficult to find a good programmer, no matter what. You really need to use references, have very good interviewing skills, or just luck out.
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I've worked with H-1B's from and in different companies also. However, I have to disagree with this assessment. They were a wide mix of skills and abilities, just like citizens. Some were pretty darn good, some barely passable. Some were also l
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7.3% Technical Violations... (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly I'm surprised ONLY 7.3% have technical violations. It is an extremely long, complex, and needless process that makes it easy to make mistakes at every step.
There have been books dedicated JUST to the process of US visa application forms, it really is that bad and can take up to or over six months.
I'm sure a lot of fraud goes on... But technical violations is more than likely just people struggling with the system.
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Worse than that. Both my school's international student & scholar department and several law professionals said it's so complicated, you must have it done by an actively practicing specialized immigration attorney. A general attorney or someone who hasn't done a case in a year or two is almost guaranteed to get something wrong.
H1B abuses have been well know for many years (Score:5, Informative)
So many articles are coming out about the newly discovered h1b abuses, that you might think that, because everybody finally knows about the abuses, the problems will be fixed.
Sorry folks, but the abuses have been well know for nearly a decade.
September 2000
Silicon Valley Uses Immigrant Engineers to Keep Salaries
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/10-silicon-valley-uses-immigrant-engineers-to-keep-salaries/ [projectcensored.org]
2002
Enron and the H-1B American Worker Replacement Program
http://www.americanreformation.org/Articles/GlennJackson/EnronandH1BVisas.htm [americanreformation.org]
February 2003
Is Anybody Out There? Is Anyone Listening?
http://www.rense.com/general35/wakeupNHwakeup.htm [rense.com]
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An employer still has a lot more power over the H1-B employee than over an American. Most H1-Bs want to be sponsored for a Green Card, and that's expensive, takes a long while, and the process gets longer with badly timed job switches mid stream. Many companies won't even bother with an H1-B transfer, so their job options are also much more limited.
Want to lower abuse? Lower fees for the applications for H1-Bs that already have a valid H1-B for another company, and make Green Cards more available. As it is,
Are you sure about that total? (Score:2)
13.4 percent showed fraud and 7.3 percent showed technical violations, for an overall violation rate of 20.7 percent.
That's only accurate if there's NO overlap between fraud and technical violations. I'd expect the overall rate to be significantly lower.
That said, however, ... that's still a large percentage.
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Yes, I am sure about that total. (Score:2, Informative)
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There is no overlap; check out their methodology section here: http://grassley.senate.gov/private/upload/100820081-3.pdf [senate.gov]
OMG 20% fraud is a nice headline grabber, but the actual results of the study mean that the H1-B program is working rather well:
- Only in 15 out of 246 cases the employee is paid less than the actual prevailing wage. ( i.e. 94% are paid at or above)
- Only 10 out of 246 applicants lied about their degrees or experience ( 96% )
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- Only in 15 out of 246 cases the employee is paid less than the actual prevailing wage. ( i.e. 94% are paid at or above)
- Only 10 out of 246 applicants lied about their degrees or experience ( 96% )
# of applications submitted for 2009:
65,000 work H1-Bs
20,000 "advanced degrees" H1-Bs
13.4% * 85,000 = 11,390
7.3% * 85,000 = 6,205
If you still want to pooh-pooh the #s involved, go ahead, but at least lets be honest with what's being talked about.
Does the IRS sit still for a 20% rate of fraud & technical violations?
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That would depend on what they mean by "fraud," wouldn't you say? The devil's in the details, my friend. The real fraud (such as undercutting the prevailing wage) was pretty low.
Most of their "fraud" was things like giving the wrong address for the LCA (corporate vs workplace), or making the immigrant personally pay for the visa when the law says the companies should pay for it... See the PDF I linked to in the GPP, starting page 9 if you care.
Sure, this fraud is unpleasant, but it's just not that big of a
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Unbelievable!! (Score:5, Funny)
You mean to tell me that a government program meant to keep wages artificially inflated is being abused? I'm shocked! Corruption in government? Impossible!
Next you'll try to tell me that big companies influence government officials to get favorable copyright legislation.
This is a problem with no solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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My company spent A YEAR looking for quality Java programmers in Missouri. All the experienced candidates we interviewed were little better than someone fresh out of school, and, for the position, that didn't cut it. In the end, we started to look at H1-Bs, and hired one that was unhappy with his former employer. He asked for pretty good money and got it.
At certain positions, the problem is qualifications, not salary. If you need someone to be a lead developer, limiting yourself to Americans is a great way
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If you are taking a year to look for one programmer, either:
1. Your expectations are too high
or
2. Your HR person or hiring manager is overworked and doesn't have time to do a proper search.
This country is simply overflowing with average-and-above programmers. You probably think you need THE BEST PROGRAMMER IN THE WHOLE WORLD and are trying to attract them with a salary of less than $150k/yr.
Not all companies need a top-1%er.
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I can give you an advice: Fire your HR or whoever does interviews.
My company has been looking for great candidates for a long period of time. Eventually we found some people with, to put it politely, modest skills. I am sure that there are more people out there who could fill the jobs, but due to the extremely fubared interview process and lack of people with enough balls to say "no" we ended up with the folks closer to the left end of the bell curve in terms of IT skills.
Things were pretty good when o
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I'd say part of that is that we're in an economic downturn and people need to look like they're looking for work to continue receiving welfare. Personally, I welcome the return of the WPA to replace the welfare syst
Abuse documented on Youtube (Score:5, Informative)
Manage it like auto fuel efficiency. (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps they should manage this like the auto CAFE standard. They could call it Corporate Average Salary of H1B or C.A.S.H for short. I figure they can set an average salary of say $120,000 as these are supposed to be high demand positions. Put say a 5% or so increase a year for inflation as well. Any company not meeting the average will be fined.
With this I could foresee companies trying to sabotage their competitors by wooing their top salaried H1B's and ruining their average. Win for H1B's. Not sure if a limit on how many H1B's would be required with this in place.
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I'd say $120,000 is way too much.
To improve America, an immigrant must over better than an average American. So how about we use this "better than average" as a threshold and hand out green cards to anyone above it?
1) IQ over 100 pts
2) Speaks and reads English above average
3) Can earn over $44,000 (annual household income)
4) Less than $90,000 debt (per household)
5) Younger than 37
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How to beat the system. (Score:3, Insightful)
As an American IT worker, I've never worried about the H-1B worker. Why? Because I'm a well rounded IT worker who has done most if not all of it. I'm not a 10 out 10 on every technology but I have a lot of 7's and 8's and I know more then most about networking, the internet and enterprise computing. I read, I study and I work hard, plus I can communicate effectively and I can lead a team. I'm no better then any other geek or nerd, I just try harder and recognize that what I do for a living is looked at as a cost center in most organizations.
There's no magic here. If you do a good job, communicate well, and are well rounded you should never have to worry about a job. H-1B visa workers are not a threat, they just raise the bar a little bit on native American workers. Ultimately if you are the most valuable choice for a company they will pick you. It's not always about the cheapest laborer.
Re:How to beat the system. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, yes, I was once naive like that too and said much the same thing about others who were losing their jobs. I thought that there would always be jobs for the top 10% of their engineering class, the ones whose managers praised them. The ones who were so adaptable they could learn a new language or environment over a weekend. But I was naive and I, too, was replaced by cheap H1B labor.
Take my advice. Learn to live on a third of your income. Then it will not hurt so bad when it happens to you.
Re:How to beat the system. (Score:4, Interesting)
Double Whammy (Score:2)
The solution: Bring down the Federal government so we can defend out land from invasion.
I'm shocked.., (Score:2)
Things will settle down eventually... (Score:2)
The concept of skills, pay and visas will be largely irrelevant in the distant future. The United States was a good gig for many, but its time is up. The trend of reverse migration is slowly staring to happen and I will give it another 5-10 years before things will settle down where U.S. imports of qualified IT workers equal the exports of the same.
There is nothing to do in the U.S. nowadays. If you are qualified, you have a great chance of getting a job in India or somewhere in Asia that pays you way
No shocker here. (Score:2)
'However, both Presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, have said they support expanding the program.'
Along with every other significant abuse.
This is anoying as I tryed to get one legaly (Score:3, Interesting)
I was in the Us for about 2 years on TN visas but would have liked to get the H1-B and would have been willing to stay longer (I am Canadian), I was working as a ldap expert doing contract work and worked with Apple and EDS on the GM contract yet when my contract company applied for my H1-B that year 3 times as many applications hit the office in the morning as there where H1-B visas for. Mine was one of them yet I never got one. Then turn around and find a guy working at a McDonnalds as I believe assistant manager who got one of the H1-B's that year. Kind of puts a sour taste in ones mouth that a skilled worker in demand can't get one but a bugger flipper can.
Re:dupe (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone else having the issue where the H1B candidates that are interviewed (over the phone, natch) are not the same people that show up on the first day at work?
That's the new scam. The staffing companies specializing in the H1B candidates are using shills for the interviews.
Re:dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
If this country is to build up the number of technical people, it needs to pay them. Companies like Microsoft complain there aren't enough skilled people but by abusing the H1B program, they depress the pay scale, they take jobs away from qualified (but more expensive) Americans, etc.
And with a 20% fraud rate, the H1B program needs an overhaul.
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Microsoft needs an overhaul.
And it's coming in spades RSN.
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PS: If you a highly talented coder working 50hours a week and making under 140k your working for peanuts.
Re:dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually the opposite of what many of us want. How about: just stop letting people immigrate into the U.S. as glorified indentured servants.
I've said it before: I'd love to have open borders for technical talent. I'm willing to compete with anyone in the world on technical ability. And, if they're better than me I guess I'll just have a chance to work for them when they start their own companies.
However, I don't want to take part in a race to the bottom of wages and benefits. And, that's what H1-B and similar programs are designed to do.
Re:dupe (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I'd rather let them come here and get a green card instead of a visa. That way they can move about and not be tied to a company. They would be free to leave if they did not feel they were getting a fair deal.
I find it ironic that the companies complain about a shortage and then support a program that eventually ships all this talent back out of the country. It goes to show that they are not concerned about the "talent". Their definition of a shortage is "we can't find any experienced programmers to work in San Jose for $15 an hour".
Re:dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Since June of this year, I've seen this several times. Back in June of this year my company had three extremely talented full-time developers do a phone interview on an H1B candidate; the guy passed with flying colors... Once the guy started I didn't see him getting much work done and was always really quiet; I sat right next to him. I find this guy was given simpler and simpler tasks that he couldn't complete and the final straw was that he was asked to write a stored procedure and couldn't do it. He was even called out on the fact that he wasn't the same person in the phone interview; of course he denied it. He was terminated shortly thereafter. He was a subcontractor via another company; the company that placed him there was duped into thinking he had skills when in fact he didn't. I've also had the pleasure (if you want to call it that) of reviewing some of these "skilled candidates" resumes only to find out when it comes down to the technical (in-person) interview they don't know sh*t when they passed a phone skills-test with flying colors.
To be honest I go to work and am in IT because I love what I do. It pisses me off to see people try to fake their way into it for either a green-card or because there is "money" here. These posers who actually make it through the screening process get into companies and cause a big mess for people like me to clean up. Even worse are some who get into management without the slightest inclining of how some of the technology is supposed to work and in return what do they do is bring in more H1B's who don't get IT.
The government should impose some sort of punishment on companies and/or the individuals that take advantage of the system and really the entire H1B process needs to be overhauled. Maybe I should start calling Immigration and reporting these people and companies who are trying to screw over the rest of us who are legitimately trying to make a living in this economy.
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There is a scam going on here. I kid you not on this one. A manager told me this.
They used to give quizzes to test the abilities of the individuals. Well what happened is that they took note of the questions asked. This was then added to some sort of database that could be retrieved at a moments notice.
The manager said that initially they did not find clients, but then they did. Then the manager realized what happened.
When I interview people I never do it with a cookie cutter approach. What I do is ask some
Re:dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
A degree in engineering is good. Engineering as a practice doesn't change a great deal -- technologies and techniques change and improve, but the basics will always apply. The same cannot be said of IT, however. It is a very moving target and closely linked to the technology and even vendor of choice. The basics of computer systems and principles are arguably the same, but people aren't taught that and aren't learning that... even in degree programs.
There is more to being a doctor or a lawyer or even an engineer than merely getting a degree. There are also professional associations and boards regulating their practices and credentials. So far, IT has managed without such professional structure, but the abuses we see are just screaming for it. The workplace is still teeming with people who responded to TV commercials promising "hot careers in technology."
Ultimately, aptitude, skill and talent need to become more measurable. There are too many people out there trying to make IT workers into assembly-line workers... but then again, I just called the classification "IT workers" and not "IT professionals" didn't I? Perhaps it could all start with names/titles.
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Ultimately, aptitude, skill and talent need to become more measurable. There are too many people out there trying to make IT workers into assembly-line workers... but then again, I just called the classification "IT workers" and not "IT professionals" didn't I? Perhaps it could all start with names/titles.
IT workers / professionals covers such a large field.
Some of it will become as lowly as factory work. Factory work was once well paid too but there's less risk involved and nearly anyone can do it.
As some aspects of computing become easier and open it up to more people then wages have to drop. It's pure supply and demand and the unfortunate fact is that so many companies rely on computers that the only way to satisfy every business' needs is to train more people.
Re:dupe (Score:5, Funny)
So, you were going for a meta-dupe, by posting two messages about this article being a dupe? Dupe-squared? Or is it a super-dupe? A dupeé?
Re:Sample group of 246 does not a statistic make.. (Score:2)
It's 0.29%.
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A sample of appx 1200 voters is enough to predict a nationwide election. It is statistically valid, assuming they did things properly, tru;y random sample, blah blah. If you want to decry the statistics go ahead, but the number 246 is not in itself a criticism. You're going to have to go deeper than that to make a valid criticism.
Someone stupiderer (Score:4, Funny)
both Presidential candidates
You mean Barr and Baldwin? To me, the rest don't matter anyway.
Re:I know the perfect solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Other countries also deny or restrict foreigners working within their borders. Why should the U.S. be any different? Even to work in Mexico, a U.S. worker has to obtain a work visa, even if only to work in the Mexican office of a U.S. owned company that happens to be a few hundred yards over the border for one day.
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"Why should the U.S. be any different?"
Because the US is better?
Re:I know the perfect solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to mod you up, but I'll comment instead so people understand.
A big part of the problem with the H1B program is that the visas are tied to one employer. A foreigner comes over to work, finds out the job is crappy, and is stuck in the job. She can't find a better job with better pay or better hours. She either works to the end of the visa, or goes back to her country early.
A big improvement to the program would be to cut this tie. Employers would have to compete for H1B workers, just like they have to compete for American workers. This will raise the wages of H1B workers, which will make H1B workers *less* desirable over American workers.
There would be less H1Bs, and the ones that remained would be skilled workers whose skills are genuinely needed.
In summary, better treatment for H1B workers will lead to better wages and more jobs for American workers.
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It would be nice to live in the world that respects your statement. Unfortunately, it is not the case because many countries require the same boring stuff -- visas, etc. -- from Americans seeking jobs overseas.
If one could move anywhere around the world, I would be typing this message from my home office in Patagonia or from a ranch in South Africa. Unfortunately, I can't hop on a plane, move there and say "respect me, betches." Many countries protect their citizens and legal permanent immigrants with law
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Let people live wherever they want. What reasonable justification does the US government have for denying foreigners the same opportunities that American citizens have? Protectionism and xenophobia don't count as reasonable justifications.
Uh, because this is our country, not yours. Is that sufficient? India, China, every other country on earth makes that distinction. It's why were all sovereign nations. This is our sandbox ... if you want to play in it, you play by our rules.
When in Rome, you shoot Roman candles. Deal with it: you're not entitled to pig a share of our goodies "just because."
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I'm from the US.
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Two reasons:
1. There are tens of thousands of U.S Citizens who have the same education and experience as you who would also love to make that $80,000.
and more importantly...
2. There are tens of thousands of Indians who have the same education and experience as you who would love to do that job for $40,000.
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First of all read the subject, I was (semi) joking.
Secondly, when is this BS propaganda about H1Bs being paid less than US workers going to go away? Read the actual report, the subject of this entire conversation and then we can talk.
Here is the link for you: http://grassley.senate.gov/private/upload/100820081-3.pdf [senate.gov]
Go to the page 9, section 2. Beneficiary not receiving the prevailing wage...
Total of 14 out of 246 cases surveyed r
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These are supposed to be exceptional people to fill a role that an American CAN NOT do.
And why is that? What is so god damn important about hiring "Americans" when if we just relaxed immigration and labor restrictions, these people could easily be Americans?
You're just nationalistic, protectionist, greedy, and implicitly racist. What is so damn important about you that we have to hire you over everyone else in the world? Because you live here? Because working at an artificially inflated wage is some god-g