The fairly recent landmark decision in Browning-Ferris[1] should take a few steps toward curbing the abuses of this practice. Not only for H1B workers, but als

The fairly recent landmark decision in Browning-Ferris[1] should take a few steps toward curbing the abuses of this practice. Not only for H1B workers, but also for many of the kinds of people that tend to get -- in this commenter's words -- "scammed" by agencies. The problem is many workers coming in know little to nothing about current US employment law. If you are building or working on something that is going on the "asset" side of a company's balance sheet, you are probably in a joint employer situation. And if you are in a joint employer situation, you need to be loud and clear about disparities. Which obviously exist when the middleman temp/outsource agency is shaving 35, 40, 50, X percent of your wages, benefits, whatever. The theory here is that the company that was trying to save a few bucks by hiring "cheap" foreign help now has to account for the liabilities of being a joint employer: now legally defined to include the welfare of any workers being treated like slave labor by the firms they hire. So... maybe it's not really "cheaper" after all. Makes a lot of sense. [1] http://www.acc.com/legalresources/quickcounsel/joint-employer-standard.cfm http://www.acc.com/legalresources/quickcounsel/joint-employe...