15 ms·

Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

126 points by dcgudeman 5y ago

andy_ppp 5y ago
I’m surprised it isn’t all about money this, if you can find a job why shouldn’t you be able to live anywhere? Why shouldn’t it be up to the company to decide that the extra paperwork involved in bringing in a foreign national isn’t worth it?
barelysapient 5y ago
Is it just me, or are American settlements against tech companies always laughably small compared to Europe and elsewhere?
- aaomidi 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28755257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28755257 People generally think these companies get punished too much in other threads.
  - barelysapient 5y ago
    Jury awards are clearly their own wild wild west that deserves a thread. I'm wondering specifically about settlements with a government enforcement agency.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  I think that there's a conflict of interests somewhere, consider that according to the data 50% of US population owns stock, 80% of the high income population, consider that US retirement funds like 401k are directly dependent on how Inc. perform, I am not sure this is not a bullshit, but I think US in general doesn't like fines to companies and I think one reason might be this direct interest of the population in the corporations revenues Edit, source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-owns-stock.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  One counter-point, FB settled with the US FTC for $5B. I think that's larger than any EU fine I know of. (It might generally be true, but it is provably not always true.)
kfprt 5y ago
>The tech industry broadly relies on H-1B visas to plug gaps in their technical workforce, Does America not have schools or would Facebook rather just underpay foreigners? 14$ million is peanuts compared to the scope of H1B fraud.
- jorblumesea 5y ago
  For FB, the H1B is largely used for pretty smart people across the globe. Their talent bar is high and so are the salaries. It truly is bringing in the best and brightest from around the world. There's also the debate about how confusing/outdated the PERM process can be. For the WITCH companies, it's likely undercutting American talent. Which is why the lawsuit is so ridiculous, why not go after the real perpetrators of H1B problems, consulting companies. Cognizant for example, known abuser of the system to bring in low cost exploitable talent. There's so much shady going on in the system but FB is probably one of the better actors.
  - verifyitnow 5y ago
    wrong. At facebook, which is classified as h1b dependent having over 15% foreign nationals, and likely over 50% foreign nationals there is corruption. Virtually all interviews and hiring decisions are made by h1b foreign nationals. It is ludicrous to say they would fairly evaluate US citizens who do not support immigration which is supplying thezs h1bs with $300k per year jobs.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    Pray tell what special skills a foreign "art director" has than an American doesn't?
    - jorblumesea 5y ago
      There's a lot of nuance to this issue, it's not that simple. I say this as a 6th generation American. Here's a good write up: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-doj-lawsuit-unfair-h1b-workers-2020-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-doj-lawsuit-unfair-...
bryan0 5y ago
> Facebook will pay $4.75 million to the U.S. government and up to $9.5 million to eligible victims of the alleged discrimination what makes one an "eligible victim"?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Being a non-immigrant applying for a job at Facebook, and not getting it?
jmwilson 5y ago
An earlier article has a bit more description of the complaint: https://archive.md/67DiB https://archive.md/67DiB For those curious about how this works, the company has to show it tried and couldn't hire a US resident, but they don't have to try very hard... so the company posts a brief job opening in a local newspaper. When nobody responds, because it's the newspaper, tada! Proof there was no American-based talent capable of filling the job.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  Is this a requirement in the US just for the initial hire, or do you also need to do the same when turning temporary position into a permanent one so your employee has a reason to apply for permanent residence, too?
  - spamizbad 5y ago
    My understanding is its only before you can sponsor a visa. H1 transfers do not require such efforts. The other way companies do this: creating job ads that look impossible to fill by requiring 5 years of experience in a technology that's only been around for 2 years. Surprised Facebook does this as they certainly have no issue paying domestic employees top dollar.
    - outworlder 5y ago
      > My understanding is its only before you can sponsor a visa. H1 transfers do not require such efforts. What do you mean H1 transfers? You need to prove that there are no US citizens able to fill the role before you sponsor a H1 visa. You also need to do the same thing again (only much more detailed, including prevailing wage determination yada yada) before you can sponsor for permanent residency. L1 (intra-company transfers) also require proving that there are no better candidates (in the US company) that can do the same job. Including specifying all the skills and how many people you employ in the US that have those skills. > The other way companies do this: creating job ads that look impossible to fill by requiring 5 years of experience in a technology that's only been around for 2 years. If this is true (it probably isn't) why haven't you notified the Department of Labor and USCIS? They will be very interested.
davidw 5y ago
The elephant in the room: make it too hard to employ talented foreigners, and sooner or later companies will just open up offices there, rather than here. Remote work has only made this easier. I want smart, hard working, talented people coming to the US, myself.
- kfprt 5y ago
  And I want a low unemployment rate so I can pay less in taxes due to the costs of welfare.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    High skill immigrants are net pay tax payers, they help reduce the need to tax you.
    - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
      If a job is so hard to find that a company needs to find foreign talent to fill it, then it should pay WAY higher than the market average. That isn't what happens the vast majority of the time.
    - bifrost 5y ago
      Eh, people paying taxes are not why taxes are high nor why they get raised regularly for no good reason...
    - kfprt 5y ago
      That's not what I'm saying. If a company hires a foreigner instead of an American then that American doesn't have a job. If they don't have a job they are unemployed. If they are unemployed then they are a net cost to me the taxpayer. If we reduce unemployment we reduce the tax burden.
      - davidw 5y ago
        This is zero sum thinking, and it's been pretty thoroughly debunked. We have more people in the US than in 1960, and far more programming jobs.
WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
This is a perfect case of good intentions on both sides creating hell. I've been sponsored in a country with similar requirements - every time you hire someone from abroad, you need to present evidence that you have tried really hard to hire someone local and failed. The levels of absurd there are likely the highest in the whole decade-long quest of my naturalization. Just this once, my sympathies are with Facebook.
- busymom0 5y ago
  > good intentions on both sides creating hell Not really. The immigrant folks who get brought in on these visas are basically exploited for harder work on lower wages in comparison to locals. FAANG tech companies care about low labour cost, employees who won't complain and won't report shady stuff going on in the company. H1B visas are perfect for that. Immigrants make up nearly 3/4 of silicon valley tech workforce: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-foreign-citizens-make-up-nearly-three-quarters-of-silicon-valley-tech-workforce-report-says/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-foreign-citizens... H1B visas essentially gives full power over an immigrant to the employer because these employers have rules that if you don't get promoted every 1-2 years, you get fired - which means H1B visa employees get deported back. So these immigrants end up working much harder for lower pay to not get deported. Meanwhile the companies get cheap labour while virtue signalling about diversity. Companies want employees who will stick around for as long as needed. H1B usually cannot leave the company for a decade because of the conditions imposed on the visa. Companies will also have policies of allowing greencard sponsorship after few years of the applicant working with them. This keeps the immigrant stuck with that company for over a decade and the company can get away with very little payraises or benefits. The only options for that H1B is to either find another company which can sponsor them (almost impossible) or to leave the country. This is also a reason why immigrants are hesitant to report work illegalities and thus the company prefer hiring them even more. This is also why all the tech companies are against any politician who wants to cut their supply of H1B visas. The tech companies claim it's about diversity but it's far from it. Here's proof that this isn't about "diversity" or caring about immigrants but more about exploitation: 76% of the h1b go to Indians and 10% goes to China. Does diversity only come from India and China? Source: https://www.gadgetsnow.com/slideshows/h1b-visa-these-countries-got-the-most-approvals/india/photolist/64098647.cms https://www.gadgetsnow.com/slideshows/h1b-visa-these-countri... Also when you get immigrants from India and China on H1B visas, they are less likely to complain about work place illegalities. Us Indians and Asians are often quite timid plus don't want to stir shit which gets us deported. Few ways to fix this: 1. Increase the minimum salary for H1B to be much higher. 2. Force employers to give yearly raises to the H1B. 3. Allow H1B to change employers. 4. Only allow students to come who once graduated, get treated the same as a citizen and their immigration status isn't inquired. These will remove the incentives for employers to exploit immigrants. These 2 videos explain it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFYj8Sg3x_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFYj8Sg3x_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-3FYea07pc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-3FYea07pc
lnxg33k1 5y ago
Is there any law left that this company hasn't broken? ;o
darth_avocado 5y ago
It’s a relic of a broken process. If you want to keep a foreign worker beyond 6 years, you can’t do that without applying for a greencard which in turn requires you to prove you don’t have a US citizen vying for the job, which should make sense. However the problem here is that the government instead of keeping a track of the country’s labor needs, outsourced this responsibility to the companies and that’s where the problem lies. Think of this for a second. Imagine there’s 10k jobs for infrastructure engineering in the market, but only 9k US citizens filing those roles. The companies then fill those 1k jobs with foreigners. But to keep them beyond 6 years, they need to prove the foreigners that they have already on the payroll for years are irreplaceable and that proof for the government is in the form that no other candidate fits that criteria, which is ridiculous. The job market is always transient and there are always people applying, but that doesn’t mean there are enough people and that’s the paradox. As a result, companies to keep people beyond 6 years, instead try to make sure they advertise the position as less as possible to quickly establish that they can keep their talent. A lot of this talent costs more money to the company than us citizens because of the additional hassle of immigration (mind you this is different from H1B and this is not visa specific). Truly speaking it’s less of companies abusing the system and more of companies trying to work with a broken system.
- kfprt 5y ago
  Couldn't companies also use the 6 years that they employ a foreigner to train an American worker to fill the position? A bachelors program is only 4 years and the company could sponsor it if they were in such desperate need.
  - rus20376 5y ago
    top comment so far! exactly correct! believe it or not companies would actually hire junior staff and train them up on the job and promote from within. let 's get back to that.
    - sushid 5y ago
      Companies do this all the time. Present day. They don't hire new grads thinking they're staff engineers on day 1. They hire them to train them up and promote them within the company.
a-and 5y ago
In this thread there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding regarding both the Permanent/Temporary visa distinction, as well as what Facebook did. The lawsuit refers to the Permanent Labor Certification process - the process of certifying that a position cannot be filled by a US citizen. This is one of the first early steps of an employer sponsoring an employee for a Green Card (so called immigrant visas, not H1-B). In the overwhelming majority of cases this affects people already employed by the company often on non-immigrant visas (such as the H1-B) which it would like to retain. They have already gone through the much demonized H1 visa process. Onto the process - the "newspaper" reference which some commenters have been hung up on is a DoL requirement. It's literally Facebook going by the book and filling all requirements. Where the lawsuit comes in is that Facebook only followed the DoL requirements and did not advertise positions how they would beyond that. Additionally the article itself states > When U.S. workers did apply, the suit said, Facebook hired them into different jobs, reserving the open position for the H-1B worker. Is this discrimination? Yes. Is there a better pathway to retain foreign employees? Not currently. I'm not a fan of Facebook at all, but they do what they need to to keep talent in a competitive environment.
- joshka 5y ago
  > > When U.S. workers did apply, the suit said, Facebook hired them into different jobs, reserving the open position for the H-1B worker. > Is this discrimination? Yes. It's fairly common practice to hire for the expertise and fit for the position. How is this different in that regard?
- a-and 5y ago
  To add - when this process fails, tech companies rotate employees out to a remote office (often in Canada). The US loses tax money which the employee would have paid and the position remains filled.
- JPKab 5y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you on your comment at all, but the "much demonized H1 process" was legitimately abused by a lot of bad actors who violated the spirit of the visa (talent you can't find in US) in pursuit of simply using it to hire at a lower rate a captive employee who you can freely exploit. I was at a company that abused it, and we were hiring DBAs whose entire job was to administer MS SQL server. There were plenty of people locally who could do this, but none who were willing to work 70 hours a week for the very average salary. The US government wasn't even sharing any data on the visas publicly until the Trump administration forced them. Once the data was public, it was blatantly obvious as to why they hadn't shared the data before. Wipro, Cognizant, etc were hogging the H1Bs for labor arbitrage purposes, making it hard for people looking for actual rare talent to get anyone in country. I had a friend from Pune who was stuck waiting in India for 2 years (an amazingly talented ML engineer) due to us not being able to get him a visa while Wipro was stealing them all in the same region for their labor arbitrage business.

126 points by dcgudeman 5y ago

I’m surprised it isn’t all about money this, if you can find a job why shouldn’t you be able to live anywhere? Why shouldn’t it be up to the company to decide that the extra paperwork involved in bringing in a foreign national isn’t worth it?

barelysapient 5y ago

Is it just me, or are American settlements against tech companies always laughably small compared to Europe and elsewhere?

aaomidi 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28755257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28755257 People generally think these companies get punished too much in other threads.
- barelysapient 5y ago
  Jury awards are clearly their own wild wild west that deserves a thread. I'm wondering specifically about settlements with a government enforcement agency.
lnxg33k1 5y ago
I think that there's a conflict of interests somewhere, consider that according to the data 50% of US population owns stock, 80% of the high income population, consider that US retirement funds like 401k are directly dependent on how Inc. perform, I am not sure this is not a bullshit, but I think US in general doesn't like fines to companies and I think one reason might be this direct interest of the population in the corporations revenues Edit, source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-owns-stock.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
edmundsauto 5y ago
One counter-point, FB settled with the US FTC for $5B. I think that's larger than any EU fine I know of. (It might generally be true, but it is provably not always true.)

kfprt 5y ago

>The tech industry broadly relies on H-1B visas to plug gaps in their technical workforce, Does America not have schools or would Facebook rather just underpay foreigners? 14$ million is peanuts compared to the scope of H1B fraud.

jorblumesea 5y ago
For FB, the H1B is largely used for pretty smart people across the globe. Their talent bar is high and so are the salaries. It truly is bringing in the best and brightest from around the world. There's also the debate about how confusing/outdated the PERM process can be. For the WITCH companies, it's likely undercutting American talent. Which is why the lawsuit is so ridiculous, why not go after the real perpetrators of H1B problems, consulting companies. Cognizant for example, known abuser of the system to bring in low cost exploitable talent. There's so much shady going on in the system but FB is probably one of the better actors.
- verifyitnow 5y ago
  wrong. At facebook, which is classified as h1b dependent having over 15% foreign nationals, and likely over 50% foreign nationals there is corruption. Virtually all interviews and hiring decisions are made by h1b foreign nationals. It is ludicrous to say they would fairly evaluate US citizens who do not support immigration which is supplying thezs h1bs with $300k per year jobs.
- kfprt 5y ago
  Pray tell what special skills a foreign "art director" has than an American doesn't?
  - jorblumesea 5y ago
    There's a lot of nuance to this issue, it's not that simple. I say this as a 6th generation American. Here's a good write up: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-doj-lawsuit-unfair-h1b-workers-2020-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-doj-lawsuit-unfair-...

bryan0 5y ago

> Facebook will pay $4.75 million to the U.S. government and up to $9.5 million to eligible victims of the alleged discrimination what makes one an "eligible victim"?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Being a non-immigrant applying for a job at Facebook, and not getting it?

jmwilson 5y ago

An earlier article has a bit more description of the complaint: https://archive.md/67DiB https://archive.md/67DiB For those curious about how this works, the company has to show it tried and couldn't hire a US resident, but they don't have to try very hard... so the company posts a brief job opening in a local newspaper. When nobody responds, because it's the newspaper, tada! Proof there was no American-based talent capable of filling the job.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
Is this a requirement in the US just for the initial hire, or do you also need to do the same when turning temporary position into a permanent one so your employee has a reason to apply for permanent residence, too?
- spamizbad 5y ago
  My understanding is its only before you can sponsor a visa. H1 transfers do not require such efforts. The other way companies do this: creating job ads that look impossible to fill by requiring 5 years of experience in a technology that's only been around for 2 years. Surprised Facebook does this as they certainly have no issue paying domestic employees top dollar.
  - outworlder 5y ago
    > My understanding is its only before you can sponsor a visa. H1 transfers do not require such efforts. What do you mean H1 transfers? You need to prove that there are no US citizens able to fill the role before you sponsor a H1 visa. You also need to do the same thing again (only much more detailed, including prevailing wage determination yada yada) before you can sponsor for permanent residency. L1 (intra-company transfers) also require proving that there are no better candidates (in the US company) that can do the same job. Including specifying all the skills and how many people you employ in the US that have those skills. > The other way companies do this: creating job ads that look impossible to fill by requiring 5 years of experience in a technology that's only been around for 2 years. If this is true (it probably isn't) why haven't you notified the Department of Labor and USCIS? They will be very interested.

davidw 5y ago

The elephant in the room: make it too hard to employ talented foreigners, and sooner or later companies will just open up offices there, rather than here. Remote work has only made this easier. I want smart, hard working, talented people coming to the US, myself.

kfprt 5y ago
And I want a low unemployment rate so I can pay less in taxes due to the costs of welfare.
- Jensson 5y ago
  High skill immigrants are net pay tax payers, they help reduce the need to tax you.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    If a job is so hard to find that a company needs to find foreign talent to fill it, then it should pay WAY higher than the market average. That isn't what happens the vast majority of the time.
  - bifrost 5y ago
    Eh, people paying taxes are not why taxes are high nor why they get raised regularly for no good reason...
  - kfprt 5y ago
    That's not what I'm saying. If a company hires a foreigner instead of an American then that American doesn't have a job. If they don't have a job they are unemployed. If they are unemployed then they are a net cost to me the taxpayer. If we reduce unemployment we reduce the tax burden.
    - davidw 5y ago
      This is zero sum thinking, and it's been pretty thoroughly debunked. We have more people in the US than in 1960, and far more programming jobs.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago

This is a perfect case of good intentions on both sides creating hell. I've been sponsored in a country with similar requirements - every time you hire someone from abroad, you need to present evidence that you have tried really hard to hire someone local and failed. The levels of absurd there are likely the highest in the whole decade-long quest of my naturalization. Just this once, my sympathies are with Facebook.

busymom0 5y ago
> good intentions on both sides creating hell Not really. The immigrant folks who get brought in on these visas are basically exploited for harder work on lower wages in comparison to locals. FAANG tech companies care about low labour cost, employees who won't complain and won't report shady stuff going on in the company. H1B visas are perfect for that. Immigrants make up nearly 3/4 of silicon valley tech workforce: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-foreign-citizens-make-up-nearly-three-quarters-of-silicon-valley-tech-workforce-report-says/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-foreign-citizens... H1B visas essentially gives full power over an immigrant to the employer because these employers have rules that if you don't get promoted every 1-2 years, you get fired - which means H1B visa employees get deported back. So these immigrants end up working much harder for lower pay to not get deported. Meanwhile the companies get cheap labour while virtue signalling about diversity. Companies want employees who will stick around for as long as needed. H1B usually cannot leave the company for a decade because of the conditions imposed on the visa. Companies will also have policies of allowing greencard sponsorship after few years of the applicant working with them. This keeps the immigrant stuck with that company for over a decade and the company can get away with very little payraises or benefits. The only options for that H1B is to either find another company which can sponsor them (almost impossible) or to leave the country. This is also a reason why immigrants are hesitant to report work illegalities and thus the company prefer hiring them even more. This is also why all the tech companies are against any politician who wants to cut their supply of H1B visas. The tech companies claim it's about diversity but it's far from it. Here's proof that this isn't about "diversity" or caring about immigrants but more about exploitation: 76% of the h1b go to Indians and 10% goes to China. Does diversity only come from India and China? Source: https://www.gadgetsnow.com/slideshows/h1b-visa-these-countries-got-the-most-approvals/india/photolist/64098647.cms https://www.gadgetsnow.com/slideshows/h1b-visa-these-countri... Also when you get immigrants from India and China on H1B visas, they are less likely to complain about work place illegalities. Us Indians and Asians are often quite timid plus don't want to stir shit which gets us deported. Few ways to fix this: 1. Increase the minimum salary for H1B to be much higher. 2. Force employers to give yearly raises to the H1B. 3. Allow H1B to change employers. 4. Only allow students to come who once graduated, get treated the same as a citizen and their immigration status isn't inquired. These will remove the incentives for employers to exploit immigrants. These 2 videos explain it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFYj8Sg3x_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFYj8Sg3x_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-3FYea07pc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-3FYea07pc

lnxg33k1 5y ago

Is there any law left that this company hasn't broken? ;o

darth_avocado 5y ago

It’s a relic of a broken process. If you want to keep a foreign worker beyond 6 years, you can’t do that without applying for a greencard which in turn requires you to prove you don’t have a US citizen vying for the job, which should make sense. However the problem here is that the government instead of keeping a track of the country’s labor needs, outsourced this responsibility to the companies and that’s where the problem lies. Think of this for a second. Imagine there’s 10k jobs for infrastructure engineering in the market, but only 9k US citizens filing those roles. The companies then fill those 1k jobs with foreigners. But to keep them beyond 6 years, they need to prove the foreigners that they have already on the payroll for years are irreplaceable and that proof for the government is in the form that no other candidate fits that criteria, which is ridiculous. The job market is always transient and there are always people applying, but that doesn’t mean there are enough people and that’s the paradox. As a result, companies to keep people beyond 6 years, instead try to make sure they advertise the position as less as possible to quickly establish that they can keep their talent. A lot of this talent costs more money to the company than us citizens because of the additional hassle of immigration (mind you this is different from H1B and this is not visa specific). Truly speaking it’s less of companies abusing the system and more of companies trying to work with a broken system.

kfprt 5y ago
Couldn't companies also use the 6 years that they employ a foreigner to train an American worker to fill the position? A bachelors program is only 4 years and the company could sponsor it if they were in such desperate need.
- rus20376 5y ago
  top comment so far! exactly correct! believe it or not companies would actually hire junior staff and train them up on the job and promote from within. let 's get back to that.
  - sushid 5y ago
    Companies do this all the time. Present day. They don't hire new grads thinking they're staff engineers on day 1. They hire them to train them up and promote them within the company.

a-and 5y ago

In this thread there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding regarding both the Permanent/Temporary visa distinction, as well as what Facebook did. The lawsuit refers to the Permanent Labor Certification process - the process of certifying that a position cannot be filled by a US citizen. This is one of the first early steps of an employer sponsoring an employee for a Green Card (so called immigrant visas, not H1-B). In the overwhelming majority of cases this affects people already employed by the company often on non-immigrant visas (such as the H1-B) which it would like to retain. They have already gone through the much demonized H1 visa process. Onto the process - the "newspaper" reference which some commenters have been hung up on is a DoL requirement. It's literally Facebook going by the book and filling all requirements. Where the lawsuit comes in is that Facebook only followed the DoL requirements and did not advertise positions how they would beyond that. Additionally the article itself states > When U.S. workers did apply, the suit said, Facebook hired them into different jobs, reserving the open position for the H-1B worker. Is this discrimination? Yes. Is there a better pathway to retain foreign employees? Not currently. I'm not a fan of Facebook at all, but they do what they need to to keep talent in a competitive environment.

joshka 5y ago
> > When U.S. workers did apply, the suit said, Facebook hired them into different jobs, reserving the open position for the H-1B worker. > Is this discrimination? Yes. It's fairly common practice to hire for the expertise and fit for the position. How is this different in that regard?
a-and 5y ago
To add - when this process fails, tech companies rotate employees out to a remote office (often in Canada). The US loses tax money which the employee would have paid and the position remains filled.
JPKab 5y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you on your comment at all, but the "much demonized H1 process" was legitimately abused by a lot of bad actors who violated the spirit of the visa (talent you can't find in US) in pursuit of simply using it to hire at a lower rate a captive employee who you can freely exploit. I was at a company that abused it, and we were hiring DBAs whose entire job was to administer MS SQL server. There were plenty of people locally who could do this, but none who were willing to work 70 hours a week for the very average salary. The US government wasn't even sharing any data on the visas publicly until the Trump administration forced them. Once the data was public, it was blatantly obvious as to why they hadn't shared the data before. Wipro, Cognizant, etc were hogging the H1Bs for labor arbitrage purposes, making it hard for people looking for actual rare talent to get anyone in country. I had a friend from Pune who was stuck waiting in India for 2 years (an amazingly talented ML engineer) due to us not being able to get him a visa while Wipro was stealing them all in the same region for their labor arbitrage business.