
H-1B: Outsourcer HCL games visa system to discriminate against non-South Asians - hanging
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/08/h-1b-outsourcing-giant-games-visa-system-to-discriminate-against-non-south-asians-in-hiring-lawsuit-claims/
======
raincom
Delivery managers at WITCH (Wipro, Infy, TCS, CTS, HCL) outsourcing firms are
paid based on how much they can earn from every account. So, this drives them
do many things. One of the consequences is the perception of the said
discrimination.

Delivery managers prefer a cheaper resource to an expensive resource. They
also practice this in India: that's why every team in India is filled with 80%
freshers or those who get paid $5k per annum in India.

In the states, they look for the cheapest resource to fill a position. Often
times, they find spots that just require warm bodies to add billable hours.
Guess, who would they go for? They will hire some H4 EAD who asks $65K per
annum in NJ. These people are happy to get some job and experience.

In old days, companies used to have lots of people coasting in their jobs.
Now, WITCH companies have captured that profit in a two prong process:
offshore to India and charge the client $30 per hour per person, then pay some
desperate college grad in India $3 per hour. And capture that $27 per hour.

This is similar to outsourcing the manufacturing, as the middle layers capture
the profit, by paying peanuts in China and by getting rid of expensive
employees in India.

Edit: basically, these companies are making money off of outsourcing lots of
bullshit jobs. They are NOT eliminating bs jobs. In fact, most of WITCH
company onsite people are project managers pretending to be super smart
workers.

~~~
codedokode
Does it mean that South Asian employees are more productive and have better
performance (output to expenses ratio) than US or other employees? And that
there is no discrimination, the company just hires the best people fitting for
the job?

Also, I wonder, if South Asia employees are so productive, why do they need an
expensive US-based management reaping most of the profit? Why cannot they
create their own company?

~~~
geodel
No rocket science here. They are productive in same sense mexican immigrants
are productive in orange and tomato farming in States. Cheap and desperate to
work even with demanding and exploitative employers because conditions back
home are worse else they wouldn't have agreed to such arrangement.

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ycombonator
The last good paying jobs in America are in software and the tech cartel in
backhanded collusion with outsourcers are actively working to suppress the
wages by flooding the market pure and simple. 10 years ago I had a neighbor
who at the time was 40 was a QA analyst and was earning decent wage fast
forward 10 years he is driving Uber because his company brought in hundreds of
new labor and gave him the option of “transferring” as a contractor to the
outsourcing company where the starting hourly pay was $25 an hour. Simple
supply and demand mechanics.

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mabbo
It seems to me the problem of the H-1B system can be very easily solved.
Instead of lotteries to cap the number of people accepted, just raise the
minimum salary requirements until you have the number of people you wanted.

Companies that want to discriminate by country of origin clearly aren't using
immigration visas as they are intended. Do you really think they'd still be in
the game if there was a $200k minimum? I doubt it.

~~~
horyzen
Every time I see an H-1B related thread comment like this will pop up. No, it
cannot "be very easily solved" by sorting salaries. For example, what about
other industries who also need foreign talents? $100K might be top wage for
some other industries but no where near the top in tech. Even in tech, how do
you expect small start-ups or small businesses to compete with giants like
FAANG who can just throw money at the problem? Also, what about the cost of
living factor? Is $200k in SV considered more competitive than $150k in some
other rural area?

~~~
mabbo
You make a lot of good points and I'm not saying I disagree on all of it. But
many of these issues are orthogonal to the problem here. (Tech startups always
have a problem of salary competition, which they fight via stock options; SV's
problem is housing and local legislation that prevents sufficient supply;
etc).

The USA has, as a society, decided it wants to limit the number of immigrants.
(I say this as a non-American who has had work visas in the US before, and
left). If you disagree with that idea, vote for politicians who will change
things. But if we take it as given that the number of immigrants on H-1B
should be limited, then the question is: how do we decide who gets them?

I contend that raising the salary minimum is better than lotteries. First, if
you're going to limit the number of immigrants, you should be limiting it to
the most talented rather than a random assortment of anyone at all that
applies. Salary limits isn't a perfect fit for that, but it's a close
approximation. Second, companies shouldn't be using immigration as a means to
have cheap labor, given the laws around limited immigration. The H-1B isn't
meant to be a means to lower the salary costs of a company, it's meant to
bring the best talent to America.

Lastly, in a lottery with limited winners, small companies will always lose
out. Why? Because companies with less integrity can and will abuse the lottery
system by inundating them with applications, often for job positions that
could be easily filled by Americans. These companies want H-1B employees that
they can underpay and abuse.

Worth adding as well, if every H-1B holder is making $200k+, they're paying
taxes on that huge salary too. This helps shut up those xenophobic types
saying 'lazy immigrants don't pay their share'.

My argument isn't that it's a fix-all for every problem. But given the premise
of limited immigration, I think lotteries are a terrible solution companies to
salary-based sorting.

~~~
horyzen
I am all for raising minimum salary to rule out abusers, but my point is there
are also a lot of other factors to consider here in addition to absolute
salary number, and if you ignore those factors, it will be unfair to a lot of
people & companies just as lottery is unfair to a lot of people & companies.

This is a complicated problem and the solution has to be non-trivial. Both
lottery and salary-sorting seems too trivial, and are therefore prune to
cheating. For example, abusers can just pay their employee $200k but then
charge them $100k "legal fees" for "immigration processing"? (I know some
companies are already doing something similar)

~~~
tjpnz
Until then raising the minimum salary sounds like it will do significantly
more good than harm.

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TuringNYC
@ransom1538

>>> "H-1B, employing visa holders directly and through outsourcers, and has
lobbied for an increase to the annual 85,000 cap on new visas." >>> My alma
mater UC Davis graduated ~300 students in computer science per year (big
school). 85,000 new visas.

Firstly, not all 85000 visas are for computer science graduates. So the better
number might be the total graduates from UC Davis, or at least the total
graduates in Engineering, Management, Economics, etc, etc.

Secondly, UC Davis is not the only school in the country, however big it is.
There are thousands of schools.

The total Undergraduate enrollment in the USA is ~10million per year. You can
assume 1/4 of that are seniors(2.5M) and perhaps 80% graduate (2M). Obviously
not all are Engineering, Management, Economics -- but my point is the "300
student vs 85,000 spots" figure is wildly wrong.

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IWeldMelons
H1B is just a tip of the iceberg. HCL etc. employ a lot of people on B1, L1
and J1 visas. They bring them on-site for 3 month, rent an apartment for like
6 or 7 of them, pay pittance and send back to India.

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ycombonator
They don’t need to game the system. The legislations are written by lobbyists
with convenient loopholes. Unfortunately for this guy this mega outsourcer has
ton of legal firepower to wiggle out of this.

~~~
conanbatt
There isnt many loopholes to the H1B. Most people that want it dont get it.

~~~
stefan_
Yet, outsourcing companies that are decidedly not hiring rare talent gobble up
the majority of it.

~~~
conanbatt
A tip of the iceberg. United states could import 2 million doctors easily
(there is a market for it) and it would be the full H1b quota forever.

What I don't understand is what is defensible about putting any non-
demographic limit at all. Why 80k and not 160k?

~~~
pm90
There's no good reason, its politics. If one party says they want to increase
the limit, the other party will say: well, just give us this instead and we
will increase the limit. And if neither party cares very much or has other
priorities, this issue just keeps remaining where it is.

~~~
conanbatt
Thats one interpretation. After all, immigrants don't vote.

~~~
ycombonator
They don’t get to. You don’t immigrate to China on a work visa and get to vote
and dictate their destiny.

~~~
pm90
Interesting. Would you say that the immigrant in question should:

* pay local and federal taxes * pay into the social security benefit system (if such a system exists)

If yes, would you still say that they shouldn't be allowed to vote?

~~~
ycombonator
“Paying taxes” is a common theme used to support argument in favor of letting
temporary immigrants vote in their host country. I am still searching for a
country that lets it’s temporary immigrants vote before they are naturalized.
There is an argument to made to tax the working immigrants. They use the
public benefits of the host country - free public education, law enforcement,
judiciary, libraries, roads and various other benefits. And finally they are
not obligated to pay taxes if they don’t like to, they can simply return to
their country.

~~~
pm90
Your arguments are totally garbage because the recommendations are
fundamentally untenable. Yeah,if those pesky immigrants want to vote they
should just go back, right. I regret having entertained the semblance of an
intelligent debate.

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jsnk
If you are interested in analysing h1b data, please check out my project,
[https://github.com/serv/h1bhub](https://github.com/serv/h1bhub)

It's a tool to ingest raw h1b data into postgres, so you can study the data
easier with SQL.

I am also working on an app that allows you to look at h1b data on web.

~~~
sytelus
Why don’t you put this in big query or Collab notebooks?

~~~
jsnk
I never used those two before, but this may be a good idea. Feel free to
create issues in the repository, and we can continue our discussion there.

------
nonamechicken
Is h1b abuse by Indian companies still an issue?

According to this article: [https://m.economictimes.com/nri/visa-and-
immigration/h-1b-ex...](https://m.economictimes.com/nri/visa-and-
immigration/h-1b-extension-rejections-rob-indian-it-firms-of-visa-
power/articleshow/68312136.cms)

Six Indian companies — TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, and the US arms of Tech
Mahindra and HCL Technologies — accounted for nearly two-thirds of the
rejections among the top 30 companies, the think tank said after analysing
data put out by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The six firms got just 16%, or 2,145, H-1B work permits, less than the 2,399
visas that Amazon bagged in 2018.

Cognizant, which is headquartered in the US but has the majority of its
workforce in India, saw 3,548 rejections during the year — the highest for any
company.

From this: [https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/tcs-
among...](https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/tcs-among-
top-10-firms-to-get-foreign-labour-certification-
for-h-1b-visas/articleshow/66328540.cms)

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the only Indian company among the top 10
firms to get foreign labour certification for the H-1B visas for the fiscal
year 2018 by receiving over 20,000 such certifications, according to official
data in which Ernst & Young was ranked No 1.

London-headquartered Ernst & Young, a multinational professional services
firm, has emerged as the top employer to have received the certification, the
date from the US labour department said. In fact, Ernst & Young with 151,164
H-1B specialist occupation labour certifications accounted for the 12.4 per
cent of all foreign labour certification for the H-1B work visas for the
fiscal year 2018 ending on September 30, according to the latest annual report
released by the Department of Labour early this month. Ernst & Young is
followed by Deloitte Consulting which received 69,869 H-1B specialty
occupations labour conditions programme. Indian-American owned Cognizant
Technology Corp comes at number three with 47,732 specialty occupations labour
conditions programme, the Department of Labour said in its latest annual
report. Cognizant is followed by HCL America (42,820), K Force Inc (32,996),
and Apple (26,833). India's Tata Consultancy Services or TCS is the only
Indian company in top 10 for the year 2018.

~~~
raincom
That article is wrong about 16%.

In 2018, for these 6 companies, the initial approval rate is 60% =
2145/(2145+1405)

Continuing approval rate for these six companies is 77% = 29638/(29638+ 8742)

Source:
[https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...](https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/Immigration%20Forms%20Data/BAHA/Top-30-H-1B-Employer-
Table-FY-2018.pdf)

------
calvinbhai
A person who is a citizen or a green card holder in the US, compared to a H-1b
bonded (tech) laborer, has way too much rights and way little incentive to
slog for an employer that is paying peanuts. It’s very easy for a manager to
get more out of a team member who is on H-1B than from someone who is a US
worker. So often US managers In US companies also prefer to hire H-1b workers
because they/employer have/has such disproportionate control over their
immigration aspects.

In addition to this, if you consider the cost of healthcare (to the company
and employee) which makes it too expensive to hire an older US citizen instead
of hiring 2-3 young H-1B workers even if the per hr $ rate is higher. A US
worker will balk at the kind of health insurance offered by these employers.
Fresh grad h-1b often has no idea nor does care about it because they are
young and healthy.

How can this be solved so that it is fair to the US workers?

Convert aspects of H-1B into a green card equivalent visa:

Aspect 1) employer can sponsor and bring in or hire a local non-citizen
candidate. The new employee gets a 3 yr work permit to work anywhere at any
time. Possibly the worker can leave on day 1 of work also.

What does this achieve? It means the employer will make sure the worker coming
in has the best pay/benefits etc compared to anything offered anywhere else in
the country.

If that happens, why will an employer, even if it is one of the WITCH
companies, hire someone for below market rates at the risk of losing them the
next day? If anything, at this point anyone who doesn’t need a visa, even a 50
yr old US worker (costs a lot w.r.t healthcare to the company) may be cheaper
to the employer.

Aspect 2) automatic conversion to permanent green card after 6 yrs: Since it’s
been proven with Aspect 1 that the non-citizen is capable of being employed
for 6 years without displacing an US worker, after being on this new H1b /
temp GC visa, just mail a permanent Green Card to this non-US worker.

The only thing in such a visa is that the employer who is into abusing H-1b
visas or wants to replace costly older employees with cheap young contractors
stands to lose quite a bit. But why should anyone care about such employers?
Sadly, these are the employers who lobby hard to keep h-1b visa with bonded
labor aspects, alive.

Pet peeve: This article is making so many racist/regionist generalizations it
is hard to understand what “South Asian” means. Does it mean people from
India/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka/Pakistan? Or is it just a euphemism to refer to
1/4th of the world population ?

About me: I’m an ex-H1b person who became a Canada permanent resident without
stepping into Canada even once (except for the landing procedures). This,
after working for 6 yrs on H1b and my last US employer trying to get me to
slog for my green card application. Being born in India, I saw no point in
going in for a US GC and remaining a bonded laborer till retirement. While o
fee sad that US and USians are squandering this opportunity, I’m glad to see
Canada capitalizing on this and see a great future for Canada.

~~~
scarejunba
Wait, how did you do that? Canada surely has a presence requirement before you
can be a permanent resident.

~~~
calvinbhai
Nope. I got it through Express Entry under the Federal Skilled Worker stream.
You get points based on Education, Experience, Age, English/French proficiency
etc.

The first day I landed in Canada, I became a Permanent Resident.

The requirements may be there for other streams / work permits / students (I'm
not aware of those paths).

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entwife
This lawsuit has more likelihood of success if the plaintiff is part of a
protected class (non-white, female, age over 40). The article didn't mention
this.

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LockNess0
If we are going to use a lottery for the H1B, we should also place a ceiling
on the number of visas issued to nationals from any particular country: I
suggest 10%.

This is similar to how the Green Card lottery works.

Otherwise one or two large countries will just monopolise the whole system,
spamming applications from their brethren.

This is exactly what is happening, with Indians making up 76% of H1B holders.

~~~
calvinbhai
10% is too much.

Why not 5%?

Actually, why not just ban applicants who are born in China and India?

</sarcasm>

