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H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say
- calvinbhai 8y agoTLDR: Overhaul H1b L1 visas. Replace work restrictions with 6yr temp Green Cards equivalent EAD (work authorization). Here's how I think the offshoring model works with many of these companies: 1) US company wants to get rid of its aging workforce (benefits costs will be too high, due to rising insurnace costs) 2) US (IBM, Accenture, HP etc) and Indian (Infosys, TCS etc) outsourcing companies bid on a project, get trained as replacements, jobs get offshored. 3) Quality complaints and rising costs of offshoring/outsourcing makes the company end the contract, and start hiring younger employees. 4) Profit! Firing / Laying off older employees in the US companies is not easy. But taking this route, the employer gets to wash hands off from the rising costs issue. This problem with tech workers paid low is because: - Healthcare and Insurance is broken in the US (it works for those who are healthy and are in a company with younger workforce) - H1b is basically a high tech indentured labor visa: If an employer is willing, the employee on H1b can be treated as such (no job mobility, no hikes, no option to even raise a voice against something going wrong). Fortunately, those on H1b visa as employees of actual companies (not outsourcing firms), they are treated much better, and it doesn't feel like indentured labor. Solution? Turn H1b, L1 and F1 OPT into time limited Green Card equivalents EADs: - An international student graduating with a degree gets a 3 yr green card equivalent work authorization - Once the student green card expires, give them a 6 yr green card (instead of an h1b). At the end of 6 yrs, if the employee has not been sponsored for an employment based permanent green card, he/she has to leave. - No limits on the number of these green cards available. - No H1b or L1 visa work restrictions. H1 and L1 dependents can work with a similar EAD. How will this work? - Giving true job mobility and freedom to switch jobs at any time, without giving the employer any hold in the immigration process, helps bump up the wages for the employees (US citizens or those on 3yr temp green card). - Employee has no fear of job loss / retribution from employer. - Employer has to pay at market or above market salaries. Or else employee will jump ship. - This will automatically regulate the number of jobs that get outsourced to teams/companies that genuinely address the problem if inefficiencies, and immediately create a penalty for those companies that are body shops running on indentured labor. - Having H1 and L1 dependents be able to work (with the new green card equivalent EAD), enables the primary visa holder to risk it and start a new venture. About me: I came to the US on F1, worked on OPT, got H1. now sick of the US immigration system, I'm moving to Canada soon! :D
- greatamerican 8y agoH-1B needs to be ended. No more wage-suppression handouts to multi-billion dollar companies. Google and the rest of these companies can pay either pay more, or train more CITIZENS.
- vkou 8y agoAs an H1B at Google, I get paid as much as my American co-workers at the same job title. Please stop spreading FUD.
- Trundle 8y agoYou contributing to supply would still suppress wages though no?
- vkou 8y agoI guess I should just not work for a living, then. I'm hoping that people making such an observation have native American ancestry.
- baruchthescribe 8y agoSure you can. But you have to go back first.
- gnulinux 8y agoThis is an extremely aggressive and rude attitude. How do people end up hating other people this much?
- dang 8y agoNormally we'd ban a new account for posting this way. Fortunately your previous comment was a fine one for HN, so we won't do that this time. But if you'd please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
- hemantv 8y agoThese exploitation are far too common they are just very unreported due to fear of losing job and having to leave country in 24 hours notice. Desi consulting shops are most to blame for. They learned tricks from big guys, it's easy to make big guys change their ways but not all these moms and pops shops.
- commonsense123 8y agoit high time these desi consultants are bought to law. To reduce H1B abuses, the focus has to be on them. Modern day slavery.
- Bahamut 8y ago> Cloudwick Technologies of Newark has been ordered to pay about $175,000 to 12 employees for back wages after violating H-1B rules, the U.S. Department of Labor said. Is it $175000 in back wages per person, or total for all 12 people? The wording is a little sloppy here.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- btown 8y ago"A Northern California company that federal officials say violated salary requirements of the country’s foreign-worker visa program will pay a total of $173,044 to 12 workers, the U.S. Department of Labor said Tuesday." https://apnews.com/d4a22bf65d5f49f3b65bc4806e86e0bd https://apnews.com/d4a22bf65d5f49f3b65bc4806e86e0bd Given that's what one might have paid for only two of those workers for a year at their expected salaries, this seems woefully inadequate as a deterrent.
- devcpp 8y agoI doubt they would have received $80k+, maybe half, even in that area. And that's in addition to what they had already been paid. So that sounds about right for back wages. Still, there's no deterrent here, you're correct. If they do again there may be real fines however.
- jen729w 8y agoShocker. Here’s what happens in Melbourne, Australia. I used to work for one of the “big 4” banks. 1. Bank outsources to vendor. Typically IBM. “It’ll be cheaper!” 2. IBM is, initially, cheaper - because all of their staff are in India of course. 3. But they can’t do the job from India because they need to be here talking to their colleagues at the bank. 4. So they get flown to Melbourne, but still on Indian wages, where the poor souls live ten to an apartment because they can’t afford anything else. 5. The bank has now saved money by “offshoring” despite the workers actually being here in Australia. It’s a disgrace and I have no idea why it isn’t in the news.
- 49bc 8y agoIf I was living in India I’d probably take that deal.
- manjunaths 8y agoI know that it is a common belief that India is 3rd world country and people would jump at any chance to get out. Not all of India is like that and not all of us are wage slaves doing menial jobs in IT. Some of us have a better quality of life, friends, family, culture and social life. Not to mention the amazing home food.
- dingo_bat 8y agoAgreed. I am a software engineer in Bangalore. And quality of life is good enough that I would consider moving to US only for salary > $100k.
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoThis is one thing I don't entirely understand in terms of political alignment. The one side that is supposed to be about the little guy seems to support this system of immigration which leads quite directly to depressed wages and exploitation of this sort. Even in cases where the 'guest workers' are not so ridiculously underpaid, companies still exploit the fact that these workers generally have to have this job or they may be forced to leave the nation losing any hopes of gaining permanent residency or citizenship. In other words when the company tells them to jump, their only question is going to be how high - compared to an increasingly 'mobile' domestic workforce.
- booblik 8y agoActually H1B is easily transferable.
- jarsj 8y agoNot really in these cases. The talent is low-skill and they will have trouble finding high-skill jobs if they don't partake in the scam.
- candiodari 8y agoThis is why socialist in the vast majority of the 20th century were vehemently anti-immigration, and the right was pro-immigration. Immigration destroys labor, and rewards capital. You'd think "leftists" would have a problem with that. Or maybe it's just the pendulum swining back I guess. When democrats and republicans were young, new, parties, republicans were definitely left-wing and democrats were right-wing. Maybe it's just switching around again.
- biocomputation 8y agoThis leftist is is vehemently and resolutely against H1-B. I've posted about it many times here on HN. I feel like access to good jobs and housing are bedrock social justice issues for American workers. I've been called a racist, even though I certainly don't care where the H1-B workers come from. If it were up to me, I would literally line up the planes and send them all home. American tech companies are basically the richest companies on the planet, and they can well afford to hire and train American workers. In light of growing income inequality, it makes me sick to think that so many of the best paying jobs in the economy go to foreign nationals. Oh, and, as I've said many times before, non-profits, which include basically all hospitals and universities in the entire country are exempt from the annual cap. H1-B produces terribly unjust outcome for American workers.
- tiff_seattle 8y agoWhy not just adjust the H-1B program so that the highest paid positions get priority? That way companies could still hire abroad for in-demand skills, but it would eliminate bringing people into the country to avoid paying the prevailing wages for IT workers. You could even make exceptions for academic or medical work as needed. It seems like a common sense adjustment to the program, but I don't see many people offering this up as a solution to this problem.
- jarsj 8y agoThat would be great, but companies would figure out ways around it. Company would pay 2X and ask employee to pay X to some random/affiliated company for training etc. They would even do this handoff in India to stay out of radar and tell you what many indians would take the deal. The solution is "EXTREMELY" strict penalties including prison time for board of companies who indulge in it willingly.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoSuch kickbacks would be very illegal and are prosecuted very aggressively already I think.
- paxys 8y agoIncluding the example in this very article which no one has bothered to read.
- smnrchrds 8y agoI doubt that would be even remotely legal. If it were, you would have seen tons of minimum wage jobs paying below minimum wage through these schemes.
- diebeforei485 8y agoIt's easy to exploit immigrants though. Cultural differences (less likely to speak out), as well as lack of knowledge and experience of local laws, make the likelihood of legal action very low indeed.
- mc32 8y agoI've been told some of the H1Bs at the goog SJC offices mostly do make work work. Which, if true, raises the question, why do they even have them if they putt around most of the day trying to figure out what else they can do on projects in limbo.
- elvirs 8y agomay be unrelated but this reinforces my observation that moat successful immigrant business owners get rich by abusing their fellow countrymen who arrived to the states later, dont have paperwork in order, lack language skills, etc.
- cheriot 8y agoIt's always companies that specialize in offshoring caught doing this. Why do these companies get H1B visas when there are companies willing to pay better that don't? Turn H1B into an auction. Lotteries are a terrible way to allocate a scare resource.
- candiodari 8y agoThey're also a way to reward exploitation. Why ? Because exploiters can just rapid-fire requests and therefore increase their odds massively, but companies that want specific high-performers cannot, because there aren't that many.
- bduerst 8y agoH1B auctions would drive wages down for American citizens. Companies could hire immigrants for less than what the prevailing wage is of citizens working the same job in the same area - then lay off the citizens.
- tomp 8y agoWhy wouldn’t that happen already now?
- nitwit005 8y agoThen you'd just adjust the pool of openings till it stopped being an issue. We control the supply, so we can set the price. And you're kind of overlooking that the program is already heavily used for what you're afraid of.
- bduerst 8y agoThen you'd drastically lower the inflow number of skilled laborers contributing to the U.S. economy - which is the opposite purpose of the H1B program.
- sanxiyn 8y agoYou can have both auction and prevailing wage requirement.
- thisisit 8y agoPSA: This is massive clickbait. This article is not about "Bay Area", as in San Franciso Bay area. Here's the content: A dozen Indian workers at an East Bay technology firm were promised salaries of up to $8,300 Cloudwick Technologies of Newark has been ordered to pay about Seriously, what is this East Bay area? Google turns up nothing. Edit: Thank for pointing out my mistake. Looks like my understanding of US geography isn't that great.
- paxys 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Bay_(San_Francisco_Bay_Area) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Bay_(San_Francisco_Bay_Ar...
- thisisit 8y agoThanks. Strangely Google's first result for Newark was New Jersey.
- Cookingboy 8y agoWhat are you talking about? East Bay is part of the SF Bay Area, which is consisted of cities such as Newark (the city in this article), Union City, Fremont, etc. Here in the Bay Area we have East Bay, South Bay, Peninsula, etc
- diebeforei485 8y agoYou must be either insane or ignorant if you think Newark, CA is not in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Apocryphon 8y agoTo be fair, the one in New Jersey is far more famous.
- pkaye 8y agoNewark is like 5 miles (as crow flies) from Facebook and Google.
- diebeforei485 8y agoThis is fairly typical of companies that use this employer-client or employer-vendor-client (EVC) business model. In this case, the employer is Cloudwick, and the clients are "Apple, Cisco, Comcast, American Express, Bank of America, Safeway, Verizon and Visa". It is very common for employers in the EVC model to pay well below market wages, and often withhold, or ask employees to pay back some of the money under the table, making the actual wage much lower. The employees are pretty much powerless - if they refuse, they would get fired and be forced to leave the country. These employers often add fake projects or fake experience to their employees' resumes when offering them to a vendor or client. There is only one solution - a massive clampdown on third-party placements on H-1B employers, as is already done on L-1 and STEM OPT employers.
- smsm42 8y agoSo what's this Cloudwick is actually doing? I went to their homepage and it's a buzzword bingo.
- bduerst 8y agoThey look like a standard global systems integrator (GSI) company - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_integrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_integrator
- thisisit 8y ago“Cloudwick has never brought resources from India,” Chhabra said. “All the resources are Master’s students that have educated in U.S. and then we hired and trained them.” This is rather slippery way to paint the picture. And from the looks of it this is more of an abuse of the F-1/OPT visas program. These visas haven't got the coverage as much as H1B program: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2495580/it-careers/foreign-opt-students-work-long-hours-for-low-pay--says-professor.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2495580/it-careers/for... Unlike H-1 the F-1/OPT visas don't have any wage requirements. It rather asks employers to attest that people on F-1 are paid according to someone with similar duties. Workers were paid $800 a month during training, he said. The whole training thing is another sword of damocles hanging on people getting H1/F1 visas. I have heard stories about Infosys suing people for money if they leave before serving 2 years on H1 with Infosys. The route Infosys take is that company has paid for training and needs to claw back that amount from these employees.
- hocuspocus 8y agoThere's an entire industry built around F-1/OPT abuse, since it's the only way to have a decent shot at getting an H-1B. Cf. the Silicon Valley University and the like. Other visas are also abused (J-1, L-1, even O-1). It wouldn't be that hard to have a saner immigration path for skilled workers, like Canada, Australia and many European countries.
- sg0 8y agoI've seen consultants in Houston enticing Masters students or spouses of H1-B holders (holding some technology degree) with H1-B promises [Masters students on F1 visa are good targets, because they can work for 12 months if their Optional Practical Training (OPT) gets approved]. A company outsources projects to these consultants, and the consultants pay these people following any schedule they like. Someone I know was hired by one of these consultants, and then she managed to get a job offer with H1-B sponsoring. The consultancy created lot of problems when she tried to quit, and threatened all sorts of repercussions.
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