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A group of outsourcing companies that use the H-1B visa to fill U.S. jobs with foreign workers have filed a lawsuit claiming recent U.S. government restrictions on the visa program are illegal.
The legal action attacks a February policy change by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration that imposed tighter requirements on outsourcers seeking H-1B visas, which are intended for jobs requiring specialized skills and a bachelor's degree or higher.
[...] The new H-1B rules single out outsourcing firms and require that they provide evidence proving a worker will perform a specialized job, and that the job match the work specified on the visa application.
In the suit, two companies and a consortium that has been lobbying Congress over H-1B restrictions claimed Citizenship and Immigration lacked the authority to make the rule changes, and that the alleged over-reach violates the U.S. Administrative Procedures Act.
[...] The companies and group filing suit claim the new H-1B requirements will "choke out" their work by denying them H-1B visas and visa extensions.
"Without sufficient employees to meet their clients' needs, Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm to reputation and ability to compete," the suit said.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by SparkyGSX on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:41AM (7 children)
Obviously, the companies complaining are the ones abusing the H1-B system to get cheap IT labor from India and such, like Tata. If you really desperately need an educated and skilled worker, writing down exactly what he/she is going to do is part of the recruitment process anyway.
Fixing the H1-B seems so very simple; just require the salary to be included in the application, and only grant the visas to the top X applications; the companies who really need highly educated and skilled applicants will pay large salaries anyway, while the "cheap from India" labor would be cheap and therefore not qualify. Of course the specified salary would have to be enforced but that doesn't seem very difficult.
If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @04:03AM
Obviously, the companies complaining are the ones abusing the H1-B system to get cheap IT labor from India and such
Goes with the territory. The nature of the system itself is built on pure corruption. It's no different than the farmers who truck in thousands of illegals for field work, just more paperwork.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @04:58AM (1 child)
Requiring the pay for H1B workers to be in above the 3rd quartile for workers in their respective field would pretty much eliminate the abuse of the program as it would be too costly to hire them when there are other options. Anything else is going to be gamed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @02:25PM
This solution requires that their field be accurately described.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Tuesday May 08 2018, @06:52AM (1 child)
>just require the salary to be included in the application, and only grant the visas to the top X applications; the companies who really need highly educated and skilled applicants will pay large salaries anyway, while the "cheap from India" labor would be cheap and therefore not qualify.
This is an elegant solution, they should use programmers to make law, not lawyers in perpetual conflict of interest.
According to my model of the universe, the solution will not work completely because immigration is not about money, it's about reshaping society, so they would still hire foreigners. Yet, it would reduce the flow a lot and make the new guys more prone to americanize.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:21AM
Short-term, you pay foreigners more than they're worth. Long-term, you flood the employee market so average expected pay in the field sinks down. You can hire more for less.
Besides, foreigners want to come, they have incentive to come independently of the money offered, even for much less money than the law will make employers pay them.
So, the system will be gamed, prospective foreign employees will accepts all sorts of shady deals such as fictive loans, paying back parts of their salary to employers' dependent companies - company "hotel", company "store" (Yeah "16 tons, and what do you get ..."), or accept being paid in part in some blown up worthless stock ... etc., when there is a will, there is a way, and the law always plays catch with crooks.
Immigration and IRS should check out their standard of living, compared to domestic equivalent employees, and trace any money sent back to country of origin (does it end up at their families, or does it perhaps end at local recruiter/launderer, who sends most of it back to the employer).
In short, if this guy doesn't have the stated money as his disposable income, something is very wrong.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:25AM
The H1-B sponsor is required to withhold and remit income tax for the H1-B workers based on the specified application salary not actual pay. Any short falls must be paid by the sponsor not employee. (i.e. game that all you want)
How is that for enforcement? Bring the IRS in...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:40AM
You need to also police the salary though.
In Sweden they require writing in a salary, but it has no legal meaning WHATSOEVER.
Which really is as idiotic how it sounds, sometimes you really wonder how dumb politicians can be...