7 ms·

The law should be written that if you caught violating the terms and spirit of the h1-b visa program, you give up right to participate in h1-b sponsorships for

• toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > The law should be written that if you caught violating the terms and spirit of the h1-b visa program, you give up right to participate in h1-b sponsorships for x number of years. Let's go a step further. If you are in gross violation of the H1-B program terms, you lose the right to participate permanently. Incentives matter.
  • bostonpete 11y ago
    Permanently is a long time. It would seem nonsensical to handcuff a company 20 years from now for violations made today. Not only could there have been complete turnover in the intervening years, but there could have been various mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs.
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > Permanently is a long time. Permanently is a long time. If you prefer not to hold the corporation responsible forever, I would be satisfied with holding corporate officers personally liable instead. If the IRS and state labor government is able to purse corporate directors personally for payroll taxes that haven't been paid by a company in the event of insolvency, this would be no different (ie labor regulation). We've tried the carrot, now its time to try the stick.
    • s73v3r 11y ago
      Tough. Many people were idiots when they were younger, and have found themselves saddled with criminal records. Most of these people are not the same person they were when they committed the crime. Yet they still find themselves paying for it. I fail to see why a company should have it any different.
      • gambiting 11y ago
        If anything, this is an argument to stop giving people life sentences, not for giving companies "permanent" punishments. Basf, Siemens, Bayer - all used to work for the Nazis and used labor from concentration camps. Yet you can't possibly say that these companies are the same as they were 70 years ago.
        • joshuapants 11y ago
          Not just Bayer, the whole IG Farben conglomerate.
      • evilduck 11y ago
        Unfortunately, actual people generally only have one true identity and punishments and records stick to that identity. Companies on the other hand, especially those prone to skirting or breaking laws intentionally, come and go. The profit incentive for exploiting foreign workers (and many other criminal corporate activities) is much higher than the costs of creating a purpose-built fall-guy corporate veil. If you lay out permenant company specific bans, those companies will just disappear and a new hydra head will pop up in its place doing the exact same thing. The profit incentive to exploit cheap foreign labor is just too high. Personally, I think if "companies are people", then the people (board of directors, owners, executives) in charge of that "person" should personally share in the company's legal punishments as accomplices or co-conspirators. Let the actual human people who made those illegal choices sit in jail for a few years and decide if that activity is worth pursuing again with a new company.
    • Brashman 11y ago
      I would imagine permanent punishments would just cause companies to dissolve and reform through some paperwork acrobatics (similar to bankruptcy processes like New GM).
      • hwstar 11y ago
        Then the government should blacklist the corporate officers by name if there is a pattern of certain individuals using this tactic.
  • mtbcoder 11y ago
    Wouldn't they then just simply split off the technology arm into it's own entity, incorporate it, re-brand it and continue on as usual?
    • Someone1234 11y ago
      I'm glad someone pointed this out. Companies constantly change identities, in particular for employment, and if there was punishments imposed for an entity, they'd just split it into many smaller entities and let them get punished.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        In my comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9733417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9733417) I address holding corporate offers personally responsible if necessary.
    • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      Make it so all managers involved in the decisions lose their ability to participate in the program. Make it an administrative judgement, not a punishment, so you don't have to worry about the whole 'being found guilty' bit.
• jobu 11y ago
  Agreed. I didn't realize the rules around H-1B's replacing American workers was so specific: "The visas are meant for foreigners with specialized skills to fill discrete positions when Americans with those skills are not available. In the applications large companies must file for the visas, they have to confirm that no American workers will be displaced." This case with Disney having US citizens train their H-1B replacements is a clear violation, and hopefully there are repercussions for Disney and Cognizant. (And more than just this: "Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, has called for an investigation of the H-1B visa program.")
  • lsllc 11y ago
    What would happen to you or I if we lied to a federal agent?
  • pyrophane 11y ago
    I think this is the core of the problem. If H-1B were actually being applied as the law is written, I don't think anyone would have a problem with it, at all. Unfortunately, it appears that the government is doing almost nothing to prevent abuse, probably because of lobbying from tech firms. You are right, though, the practice of using the visa program to replace existing workers with lower cost alternatives which they must train is clearly not allowed.
    • ncr100 11y ago
      Can a lawsuit be brought against the government if it is truly shirking its responsibilities when presented with evidence of broken laws? I smell a money-making opportunity for an enterprising attorney!
      • linkregister 11y ago
        Are you talking about a Citizen Suit [1]? Naïvely, it sounds like a great candidate for a class action. Any real lawyers want to weigh in? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_suit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_suit
      • 11y ago
• makeitsuckless 11y ago
  Or simply prevent the problem. In the Netherlands, similar visa have a minimum salary requirement. As a result, we have tech workers from all over the planet, but no herds of cheap labour from India. The Indians that are here are well paid experts. If knowledge migrant visa are abused to import cheap labour, the problem is clearly in the word "cheap".
  • theklub 11y ago
    I like that solution.
  • toomuchtodo 11y ago
    The H1-B visa program has a minimum salary requirement of $60K USD a year. Of course, that's almost entry level in the technology sector. Raising that to $100K-$150K/year would definitely help, and it would be hard to argue against it. If you're relying on talent from outside the country due to a skills shortage, paying a premium is the cost of doing business.
    • sgrove 11y ago
      It would hurt startups under a few conditions. Perhaps there could be an overall package, rather than pure salary (e.g., equity, etc.)? Or a gradient on the scale of the employer? It's difficult to find a set of rules that don't hamstring the small companies, don't misalign incentives for big companies, and aren't ridiculously complex.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        I wouldn't be against taking equity into account, but in the end, cash salary is most important. Equity is almost always a lottery ticket, even if you're a founder. If you're a founder, you should be riding on a different US visa, not an H1-B.
        • sgrove 11y ago
          Oh sure, but for example, a company that's doing a knowledge-app that's unexpectedly big in Japan, and they want to hire Japanese-fluent (also technically very high skilled) engineers here. Early on they may not have the cash-flow to hire "market-rate" (e.g. MicroGoogleBookZon) salaries, but is willing to put skin in the game with other resources.
• tomjen3 11y ago
  How would you avoid royally screwing over the people no H1-B sponserships? It seems that whenever visas are on the agenda no concern whatsoever is given for the fact that we are talking about humans, like you and me, who are only guilty of the crime of not being born in the US. The word 'racism' comes to mind.
  • panzagl 11y ago
    Yes, geography is the most racist of the social studies.
  • gambiting 11y ago
    And after reading your post, words "trolling" and "easily offended for no reason" come to mind. H1-B visa clearly stipulates that no American workers can be displaced in order to hire H1-B workers. That's the law. If a company breaks the law, an appropriate punishment would be to bar that company from hiring H1-B visa workers again, at least temporarily - just like you take away the driver licence of someone who is caught driving while drunk.
    • maxlybbert 11y ago
      > H1-B visa clearly stipulates that no American workers can be displaced in order to hire H1-B workers. That's the law. I have no opinion on whether this requirement makes sense. However, I don't see how "that's the law" is a defense against "that requirement looks racist, or at least causes disparate impact" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact ). It's entirely possible for a law to harm particular groups of people more than others.
    • tomjen3 11y ago
      I am not against preventing the company from hiring new workers if they misuse the H1-B visa. I am against forcing them to fire the current employees, who may have houses, friends, etc. You punish the drunk driver, you don't deport his employees. This entire problem would be moot if you, rather than not renewed their visa, upgraded it to a greencard. The entire HB-1 abuse would be pointless if the US had a reasonable system in place for legally acquiring visas. As it is now the only way to legally get in (other than a few specialities or people with US spouses) is the HB-1 visa.
• justincormack 11y ago
  That seems a minor punishment.