Analysts: Potential New H-1B Visa Clauses a Nuisance, No Game Changer
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Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is pushing for reform in the H-1B visa program and recently urged the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to ask for evidence that workers coming over to the United States actually have employment. Grassley recently wrote to the director of the USCIS: "Simply put, adjudicators should be asking companies up front for evidence that H-1B visa holders actually have a job awaiting them in the U.S., i.e., that workers are not coming in only to be 'benched' by employers." Some business analysts in India do not see the current efforts to prove employment evidence as anything more than an "irritant," writes Amit Tripathi of DNA India. Apurva Shah, a Mumbai-based IT sector analyst at broking firm Prabhudas Lilladher, said, "This is not going to impact companies significantly. This can at best be termed as another irritant, as a small portion of the onsite workforce remains in transition between projects." On an average about 5% of the onsite workforce of Indian IT service firms remains on bench. Whether or not the USCIS will follow Grassley's lead on evidence gathering remains to be seen. In 2007, an audit of a small percentage of H-1B visa companies found that there have been cases of fraud that included forged documentation, phantom businesses and phony job offers, and more. The Justice Department has been enforcing laws on the books after the audit, and has brought suit against a number of companies, including Vision Systems Group, Cognizant Technology, Patni Computer Systems and Computech. In an effort to show that the USCIS takes fraud seriously, the organization began earlier this year making surprise audit visits to companies it suspects is operating under false pretenses. At issue is whether the fraud is as widespread as Grassley and others believe. The H-1B visa program has had up to 65,000 participants with companies of all sizes, many of them household American firms including Microsoft, but also many of the largest Indian outsourcing companies like WiPro, Infosys and others. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c093d0ad-098d-4d47-a8b8-863f6a0a459e) |
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Comments (11)
The "analyst" clearly has not read the bill.
I guess the "analysts" in India are just a insightful as the ones in the U.S.
Posted by bill gates | October 5, 2009 1:46 PM
Yep, genuine reform would require cutting all US visas to less than a 12th of their current, hideously excessive levels.
Posted by jgo | October 5, 2009 5:01 PM
The Durbin/Grassley bill is a game changer. The H-1b visa should not be used as an outplacement visa. The Durbin/Grassley bill prevents offshoring firms from leveraging this visa to offshore American jobs and projects.
Posted by R. Lawson | October 5, 2009 7:03 PM
The requirement to show that the worker has employment is silly. This is just an affirmation the work has employment. It does prevent firms from "stockpiling" H-1B workers for future use.
BTW: H-1Bs that go to the bench have employment. The conditions of H-1B visas is the visa holder cannot put an H-1B on unpaid bench time. The visa holder doesn't have to bring over the visa holder as soon as the visa is issued anyway.
Although Grassley can say (almost) honestly say he toughened the H-1B laws in his next election run, this provision really doesn't do anything.
The comment about sending workers to Canada and Mexico is interesting; did nobody catch that? The quote "since people from Mexico and Canada do not need H-1B under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta)". Well, they do need Green cards to work in the US unlewss they are on L1 visas.
Now L1 visa reform would be effective. Look up how many L1 visa companies like TCS and others have; these far outnumber the H-1B and I know from personal experience L1 visas (we joke the "L" stands for "Loophole") are abused FAR more than H-1b visas are abused.
L1 reform would be a game changer and not just window dressing
Posted by Michael Geiser | October 6, 2009 1:09 PM
KEEP THE JOBS IN AMERICA FOR AMERICANS !!!
Posted by Babu The Great | October 6, 2009 1:52 PM
We need as many "irritants" as we can get. There are many well educated American tech workers who are now literally on the streets because of these Visa programs and the outsourcing that comes with them. Read about it on the WashTech website.
Posted by Rennie | October 6, 2009 1:58 PM
H1B's should be banned all together.
Posted by tiger | October 6, 2009 7:48 PM
So, they are already planning to move their 'off-shore' operating centers to our North American neighbors, Canada and Mexico. to get around the possible tightening and increased monitoring of H-1B visas. NAFTA strikes again at the heart of the U.S. economy.
Congress needs to link corporate tax rates to their anti-American employment policies. The more foreign workers and foreign subcontractors they use the higher their taxes. If they reduce their off-shoring, their tax rates go down. Voila! Tax reform that really helps Americans instead of harming them.
Posted by Olde Sarge | October 7, 2009 8:57 AM
The Indians don't care because they will exploit every loophole that they can to continue their ethic cleansing of Americans in our I.T. industry.
The American techie will not stand for this corrupt invasion. What has been happening in Australia (beatings of Indians) will soon start occurring in the USA if something is not done about the rampant displace, denigration, and discrimination of American I.T. workers.
THERE WILL BE RETRIBUTION.
Posted by tunnel rat | October 7, 2009 9:49 AM
Watch out Indian Outsourcers/Insourcers (H1-B).
There will be retribution! Unlike your country, US citizens are protected by the 2nd Amendment.
2nd Amendement.
Posted by Peter Banete | October 17, 2009 4:44 AM
Clearly Sen. Chuck Grassley has no clue what USCIS adjudicators have been up to lately! If he would spend the time to talk with H-1B employers he would quickly discover that USCIS adjudicators have been doing exactly what he suggests to Director Mayorkas in his Sept. 29, 2009 letter by requiring employers to show that real job offers exist in the location specified in the LCA and even requesting copies of contracts. In fact, Sen.Grassley would learn that USCIS has arguably overstepped its bounds by requesting everything but the kitchen sink!
Sure, there have been some bad apples who have abused the system. But let's get real. The Durbin-Grassley Bill is not the answer. This would cause a large number of IT companies to suffer serious economic harm. For instance, ompanies will lose contracts because it will take too long to file H-1B petitions in order to place workers on the job. While an easy answer would be for companies to hire US workers, the problem is that there simply are not enough US workers in IT. Companies would love to hire US workers -- they hire H-1B and pay thousands of dollars in government filing fees because there simply are not enough US workers.
The government would suffer as well. The bill would impose huge and unnecessary administrative costs. At the same time, USCIS would see a huge decline in filing fees due to the restrictions on the number of H-1B workers that a company may hire.
Finally, perhaps the most disturbing thing about the bill is that is the bill really amounts to national origin discrimination. Someone should remind Sen. Grassley that our laws are designed to protect us from this.
Posted by Julie Nemecek | October 28, 2009 11:05 PM