f*******r
发帖数: 976 | 1 印度的人口贩卖公司TCS，wipro，infosys等利用系统漏洞来滥用H1B签证将会得到遏制
，对于华人H1B抽签命中率提高有帮助。这些人口贩卖公司将会被扣上limit，H1B申请
总数将会被限制。
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3003877/it-careers/sens-gr
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof-that-h-1b-vi
Two of the Senate's leading H-1B reformers, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick
Durbin (D-Ill.), say abuse of the H-1B visa "is real" and the need for
reform urgent. On Tuesday they introduced a new reform bill they say will
protect U.S. workers.
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These senators have made repeated efforts since 2007 to try to reform the H-
1B program. This time, they're getting help from co-sponsors Sen. Bill
Nelson (D-Fla.), where Disney replaced U.S. workers, Sen. Richard Blumenthal
(D-Conn.), and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Both Brown and Blumenthal
signed a letter earlier this year requesting a federal review of use of H-1B
workers at Southern California Edison.
"The H-1B visa program was never meant to replace qualified American workers
, but it was instead intended as a means to fill gaps in highly specialized
areas of employment that cannot be filled by Americans," said Grassley, in a
statement.
Grassley said the "abuse of the system is real, and media reports are
validating what we have argued against for years, including the fact that
Americans are training their replacements," he said.
"There's a sense of urgency here for Americans who are losing their jobs to
lesser skilled workers who are coming in at lower wages on a visa program
that has gotten away from its original intent. Reform of the H-1B visa
program must be a priority," said Grassley.
As with a previous bill, this latest effort, "The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform
Act," will require all employers who seek to hire an H-1B worker "to first
make a good faith effort to recruit American workers."
This bill "explicitly prohibits the replacement of American workers by H-1B
or L-1 visa holders," said the senators, in a joint statement.
A new provision will prioritize the annual allocation of H-1B visas. The
large IT services companies that offshore jobs have been receiving more than
half of the annual visa allotment, hurting the chances of employers trying
to hire smaller numbers of workers.
This bill will give U.S. graduates preference in the visa distribution. "The
preference system also gives a leg up to advanced degree holders, those
being paid a high wage, and those with valuable skills," they wrote.
The 58-page bill was just released and it remains to be seen how effective
or controversial these proposals will be.
The bill also includes limits on large IT outsourcers, which would be
prohibited from hiring H-1B workers if more than 50% of their employees are
on H-1B or L-1 visas.
The Department of Labor would also get more authority to investigate and
audit employers, and users will be required to provide "extensive
statistical data" about the H-1B program. There has never been government
data released, for instance, on the gender of H-1B workers. The program is
believed to be predominately male.
Grassley, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, can ensure that this
legislation gets a hearing, but he faces strong headwinds from the tech
industry and U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the number two person in the
Senate. Hatch, citing concerns by the tech industry, fought Grassley over H
-1B reforms two years ago during the debate on Senate's comprehensive
immigration bill.
Hatch is sponsoring the I-Squared bill, which would raise the base H-1B cap
from 65,000 to 195,000. Sen. Blumenthal is a co-sponsor of the I-Square, but
his support of the new Grassley/Durbin bill may be a sign that his views
about I-Squared are changing.
There's also potential for additional competing bills. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-
Texas) says he is working on an H-1B reform bill. | d********i
发帖数: 582 | | f*******r
发帖数: 976 | 3 Major outsourcers, largely based in India, are obtaining the lion's share of
the 85,000 H-1B visas issued each year and are paying salaries far below
the prevailing wages for American IT workers -- a violation of the spirit,
if not the letter, of the H-1B rules. New information from U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services, the federal agency that oversees the H-1B program,
finally proves what critics have long suspected: H-1B abuse is real and
rampant.
The H-1B program is designed to let U.S. companies hire foreigners at
prevailing wages when they can't find qualified Americans. And U.S.
companies, especially those in Silicon Valley, have been clamoring for years
to raise the cap of 85,000 so that they can hire more foreign workers. They
've long denied the charges that they've exaggerated the employee shortage,
so they can instead reduce wages by importing workers.
But now we know major H-1B users have in fact rigged the system to do
exactly that.
How companies rig the system to abuse H-1Bs
Here's an example of the H-1B abuse: When the Walt Disney Co. laid off 250
IT workers earlier this year, it was far more than a routine reduction in
force. The fired workers were replaced by lower-paid holders of the H-1B
visa, a controversial mechanism that is designed to allow U.S. companies to
import highly skilled foreign workers when they cannot find suitable U.S.
residents to do the job.
There are "mainframe-size loopholes built into the H-1B program. Given the
extraordinarily high profits involved in using guest workers instead of
Americans, it should surprise no one that many employers are taking
advantage of this business model and lobbying to expand it,” Ron Hira, an
assistant professor of public policy at Howard University, told a Senate
committee last year.
In the past, though, much of the evidence that H-1B holders were paid
relatively low salaries was anecdotal. But a recent Freedom of Information
Act request by Hira yielded a trove of data showing how serious those abuses
are.
The five companies that hired the largest number of H-1B workers in 2013 --
Accenture, Cognizant, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro -- pay those workers
a median salary of about $64,000 a year. That compares to the approximately
$100,000 a year earned by the fired workers at Disney.
What companies do is pay the imported workers a little more than the minimum
amount ($60,000) that would cause the federal government to penalize them
for replacing U.S. workers with foreign H-1B holders.
"This kind of salary pattern is indicative of a rigged market for wages, not
a free market," Hire tells me. "It shows how the recruitment and employment
of H-1Bs has little to do with markets and more to do with gaming the
regulations.”
Employers know the H-1B law well, of course, and that's how Disney was able
to fire so many American IT workers and replace them with cheaper foreigners
without penalty.
The H-1B program's regulations recognize that it could be used unfairly.
Thus, it contains the so-called dependent clause, which covers companies
whose H-1B workers comprise 15 percent or more of the employer's total U.S.
workforce. Among other provisions, those rules state that covered companies
or their contractors may not displace U.S. workers and must make a "good
faith” effort to find suitable domestic employees before hiring an H-1B
visa holder to do the job.
However, if a company pays a worker $60,000 or more, those rules do not
apply. That, says Hira, is why so many outsourcers pay salaries that are
very close to the threshold. Indeed, Infosys pays more than 600 of its
workers exactly $60,000 a year, and Wipro pays that amount to 500 of its
workers, he found when he analyzed the data. It's hardly a coincidence.
In the case of Disney, the IT workers were supplied by HCL America, a branch
of a large, India-based outsourcer. HCL obtained 1,024 H-1B visas in 2013,
and it pays those workers a median salary of $67,350, according to the data
obtained by Hira from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Although $
67,000 is hardly poverty level, it's a fraction of prevailing wages across
the IT industry.
Because IT wages are growing faster than overall wages, companies have
evermore incentive to reduce those costs. Over the last five years, IT wages
have increased by 11.5 percent, compared to 8.5 percent for the economy as
a whole, according to PayScale, a firm that tracks compensation in the IT
industry. That's a very substantial gain, but it likely understates the
gains for tech employees with the hottest skills.
Software architects, for example, now earn a median salary of nearly $128,
000 a year in 20 major metro areas, PayScale reported last year, while
software developers in Silicon Valley earn $97,000, plus bonuses. Those are
medians, which means that half of the people surveyed earn more.
Outsourcers use H-1B the most, pay the least
Who uses the H-1B visa program? By and large it's not the proverbial
disruptive Silicon Valley firm that lobbyists for a higher quota invariably
point to. Instead, it's the outsourcers, the federal data proves.
In 2014, 13 outsourcing firms, including seven from India, accounted for
nearly a third of the 85,000 H-1B visas that were approved. Of the major
Indian firms, Tata Consulting Services obtained 5,650, Infosys 3,454, and
Wipro 3,048. U.S.-based Cognizant Tech Solutions obtained 4,293 visas. And
Ireland-based Accenture got 2,275. (Salary data for 2014 is not yet
available.)
Yes, large U.S. tech companies use H-1B visas as well. The largest include
IBM with 1,462, Amazon with 877, Microsoft with 850, Intel with 700, and
Apple with 443.
But there's an important distinction to keep in mind: By and large, those
tech companies are following the rules on wages, paying their H-1B hires
significantly more than the outsourcers do. In 2013, Amazon paid its H-1Bs a
median salary of $95,000 a year, while Apple paid $115,000. IBM paid less,
but at $71,510 it was still more generous than the outsourcers.
New hope for H-1B reform
The H-1B program is, in part, a lottery. Companies that would like to bring
in a worker under the program sponsor him or her, then file an application.
Many of the approvals are granted by lottery because the number of qualified
applicants far exceeds the current ceiling of 85,000.
Since the recession ended, many employers have complained they can't hire
enough qualified IT workers, so they lobbied strongly to admit more workers
under H-1B.
But critics like Hira say the cap should not be raised unless the program is
substantially reformed. And there is now some hope for reform.
Two of the Senate's leading H-1B reformers, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick
Durbin (D-Ill.), say abuse of the H-1B visa "is real" and the need for
reform urgent. On Tuesday they introduced a new reform bill they say will
protect U.S. workers.
Among other important provisions, the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act "
explicitly prohibits the replacement of American workers by H-1B or L-1 visa
holders," said the senators. It also includes limits on large IT
outsourcers, which would be prohibited from hiring H-1B workers if more than
50 percent of their employees are on H-1B or L-1 visas. (L-1 visas allow
companies to transfer their offshore employees to the United States for a
limited amount of time.)
I haven't yet seen the bill, but Hira says it would be a good start for
reform.
If the Silicon Valley firms that have been lobbying for a higher cap are
sincere in their argument that they need workers to fill a gap in the labor
supply -- and not to take advantage of lower-paid foreign workers -- they'll
support the bill. If they don't, it will be hard to take their arguments
seriously. |
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