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> Aegis applied for a half-dozen visas this spring, and only one of them made it through the lottery. The year before, Aegis secured a visa for someone filing a
by dahdum 9y ago
> Aegis applied for a half-dozen visas this spring, and only one of them made it through the lottery. The year before, Aegis secured a visa for someone filing a type of job he’s filled with H-1B workers in the past. So Narayanan set up a client project for the prospective new employee, a woman who was living in Dehli, India, at the time.
Sounds like they are exactly the type of consulting firm the administration is attempting to crack down on.
> USCIS challenged the application in August, which irked Narayanan because he had provided everything the agency had asked for. Narayanan was doubly annoyed because, without someone else to handle the new contract, it fell to him directly. For the last month, Narayanan has been spending four or five hours each morning doing the work himself, forgoing his own primary responsibility, which is to bring in new clients. “We might not make the profit we were expecting because of these issues,” he said. “We are afraid of on-boarding new H-1B employees, because of the unknown world.”
My heart weeps for him. If he could do the work himself, is it really so specialized he required H1B for it? Or was it more he just didn't want to pay the local rates?
That said, having hired through the H1B program I sure hope it remains viable. Reforms based on salary instead of lottery seem like a good compromise, reducing outsourcing and low salaries endemic with H1B mills. I'd much prefer a floating high salary floor (say top 25%) and uncapping H1B entirely.
- solotronics 9y agoI always wondered why not make the H1B salary minimum the same as someone exemplary in that field ( H1B salary 1.5x the average for the position ). If someone is truly extraordinary then a company wouldn't mind paying a little extra but it would influence the average price up and not down for the field.
- rrhd 9y ago> If someone is truly extraordinary That's not the bar for the visa and never has been.
- bduerst 9y agoIt already is. H1B visa holders are required to be paid more than the prevailing wage for citizens working the same SOC job classification in the same region.
- dominotw 9y ago>prevailing wage This is a joke as it is currently implemented.
- bduerst 9y agoIs there something wrong with OES or SCA? How exactly?
- dominotw 9y agoIts gamed in many ways. Here is one example, bodyshops are based out of some small town in michigan and they use local prevailing wage for h1b application but employee is sent out to work at newyork .
- bduerst 9y agoThe H1B-violator consultancies have been cracked down on by USCIS in the past year. This has become much less of an issue.
- raincom 9y agoActually, it is tough to operate such body shops: USCIS has hired contractors to do audits/random checks on these consulting companies and their employees. So, outright fraud is very hard these days. That's also another reason why USCIS is going after the employers, who are not typical body shops operating out of some office in Edison, NJ., Kalamazoo, MI., etc.
- natoliniak 9y agoI wish that was the case, but it is not. You can verify this yourself as H1B salary data are publicly available http://h1bdata.info http://h1bdata.info. Take a look for example at Wayfair in Boston. Majority of their H1B Developers make around $50k-$70k. This is significantly less than the prevailing wages around Boston, so it is quite clear that they are using H1Bs as cheap labor source.