
Investigation Reveals Silicon Valley’s Abuse of Immigrant Tech Workers - janeboo
https://www.wired.com/2014/11/investigation-reveals-silicon-valleys-abuse-immigrant-tech-workers/
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tristor
I appreciate that Wired is writing about this topic. That said, I don't know
anyone who works in tech that is not aware of the following facts:

1\. Body shops overwhelmingly exist to abuse the H1B visa allocation system

2\. Contractors cost more than FTEs, but it can be booked as CapEx instead of
OpEx so looks better during reporting

3\. Body shops generally supply subpar labor. People with cooked resumes that
are incapable of performing at the same level as their non-body shop title
peers.

4\. Body shops overwhelmingly arbitrage the fact it's near impossible to
legitimately acquire H1B visa allocations and the broken rules about job
changes for immigrants on H1B visas.

5\. All of this adds up to body shops treating immigrant workers horribly
while at the same time largely defrauding their customers and the government
offices responsible for visa allocations

TL;DR: Body shops are evil, everyone knows this, management doesn't care
because it looks good to shareholders.

~~~
chrisseaton
> I don't know anyone who works in tech that is not aware of the following
> facts

I've never heard or witnessed any of these body shops or contractors. Do they
just work at places like banks' IT departments so I may not run across them?

~~~
ChuckMcM
In my experience if you have a LinkedIn title of VP they will find you and try
to sell you their services.

~~~
sundaeofshock
They hit you up as long as you are in any kind of resource management role:
manager, director, VP, etc.

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CoolGuySteve
I was an H1-B but not for a contractor. I'm pretty sure the only reason I got
off my TN was because I applied during the recession.

There are 2 quick solutions:

1) Allow people to keep their H1-B after quitting their job. Looking for a job
while you're on an H1-B sucks, you have to deceive your employer until the
transfer goes through. And the transfer itself is a barrier to getting hired
because you can't start immediately.

2) Prioritize applications within each occupation class by wage instead of
lottery. That way these low wage body shops can't spam the system, they'd
actually have to pay a good wage rather than the "prevailing wage" to get a
visa approved.

~~~
jon_richards
About 2, do you have any thoughts about how equity should play into the H1-B
system? Often times people working for early stage startups are getting paid
far less than even "prevailing wage" because their equity is valued at next to
nothing.

~~~
poof131
The 409A valuation should be used.[1] Definitely not the fundraising valuation
for preferred shares. Employees should use the 409A too when trying to
evaluate competing offers. While early 409A evaluations can be a bit of a swag
they are much more reasonable then fundraising valuations. Example, left a
seed stage startup where the founder liked to brag about the $10 million
dollar valuation (had a convertible note with a $10 million cap so not really
a valuation). The 409A was at $2 million, which was much more reasonable for
the progress, potential, and risk.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-
is-a-409A-valuation](https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-409A-valuation)

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geebee
I hear a lot of solutions, but they're all downstream of a core problem. Any
"immigration" visa that denies immigrants the right to choose where they live,
what profession or trade they enter, and what employers (if any) they work
for, has already failed.

I understand it is tempting for silicon valley employers to lobby for control
over workers lives, under the guise of a shortage of software engineers. But
citizens are allowed to choose their path in life, and if becoming a developer
in the vally isn't appealing to them, thats the market's answer.

Don't try to fix this by creating a large scale tier of noncitizen worker with
limited mobility right. Whatever system we have, it must not coerce immigrants
into working as a developer as a condition of living in the us.

As long as this deep flaw remains, all "fixes" will just be window dressing.

~~~
closeparen
You're stating an extremist fringe position, sadly.

There is no political will for a broadly available "because I want to be an
American" visa program. To the extent that we give work authorization to
foreigners _en masse_ , it is to fulfill specific needs for labor that can't
be met by domestic workers, or because they are exceptionally skilled.

Workers are locked down to specific fields because otherwise they might start
competing with Americans for jobs, and the electorate doesn't want that.

~~~
geebee
I'm not sure I agree. The United States takes well over a million immigrants a
year into the country as free participants in the labor market, with the right
to choose a career path not dictated to them by the terms of their visa or a
corporation that "sponsors" their limited residency rights. It turns out that
these immigrants don't go into software development in the numbers silicon
valley leaders feel they should, either. That's why they tech employers have
lobbied for an parallel "immigration" system run by corporations. Basic human
freedom isn't convenient for them.

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sigsergv
This is a 2014 article, what's changed since that? I think those bodyshops
still operate and nothing changed.

~~~
pmorici
A Congress and President were just elected who claim to support doing
something about it. That and there were some high profile abuses that lead to
lawsuits and congressional attention in the past year more so than in the
past, like the Walt Disney layoff.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-
disney-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-
colluded-to-replace-us-workers-with-immigrants.html)

~~~
maxxxxx
I would be shocked if the new administration changed anything. In the end the
Republicans will always side with business and they clearly want even more
H-1Bs.

But I am ready to be positively surprised....

~~~
hga
Perhaps you didn't notice, but the GOPe(stablishment) that sides with
businesses on this issue loathed and loathe Trump with a burning passion, and
he got elected in spite of them in terms of active help (passively, their
total awfulness in these sorts of areas created conditions that allowed a
Trump to win).

So I'd a) watch to see if he doesn't pack his administration with too many
GOPe types and/or b) fires them quickly if they revert to type (he's decisive
that way, even legendary, you might say), and c) ends up campaigning against a
Do Nothing Congress
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80th_United_States_Congress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80th_United_States_Congress))
in 2018 (and on) so that he'll _eventually_ be able to get promises like his
"Intel, not Infosys" one on H-1Bs fixed in the law.

Actually, administratively he can nuke the Infosys type bodyshops from orbit,
especially if he takes a page from JFK's playbook and starts putting their
executives in Federal prison.

~~~
maxxxxx
As I said I am ready to be positively surprised. There is a lot of talk in
American politics but when it comes to action the actions are usually very
predictable. In my view Trump is no revolutionary when it comes to actual
policy.

But we'll see...

~~~
hga
Well, the calculus a lot of us Trump voters made starting in the primaries was
that we were _certainly_ going to lose with any other candidate, Trump at
least offered a chance of "winning" (or not losing so hard, whatever; my local
power plant that converted it's coal boiler to gas (and boy was that forced
change stupid from a fragility standpoint) is not going back to coal absent a
serious gas shortage and a _lot_ of time, but he can in this area at least
stop trying to explicitly kill off the industry, as Obama promised and did,
and Clinton promised to, _on the campaign trail_ (really, what were the
Democrats thinking when they nominated her???)).

Note that he doesn't have to be "revolutionary" in one sense, if he's just
another FDR Democrat like Reagan labeled himself as (albeit neither being
viciously anti-business), that would be a huge improvement.

~~~
maxxxxx
I think you are in for a big disappointment.

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natch
Off topic: Even Wired is giving cert errors these days. What gives? I heard
there was a major problem with a cert issuer recently, but it seems like it
was a couple months back. Shouldn't this be cleared up by now? Anyone else
getting this? Is Wired even aware of the problem?

~~~
krakensden
Using the Chrome beta? They require more from CAs these days, which is sort of
a hassle- CAs do not move quickly.

~~~
natch
Fully updated Safari on fully updated macOS.

