H-1B Willful Violator List of Employers

No. Because I'm not a global citizen. I'm a citizen of the US. And it is much more in my interest that my countrymen have good jobs, than someone halfway around the world.

If a system has a good basic idea but is flawed in practice, we should abolish it, no? At the moment, no one is properly served by the H1B lottery except these outsourcing firms.

1. Employers takes money from an individual to file H1B. Charges are typically $4k. 2. Employer runs a fake payroll pays peanuts to the employee while showing a bug salary on paper. 3. Consultancy creates fake resume of its employees and the real work is then done by someone sitting in India. For example Consultancy hires Ms. X on H1B with no work experience. Ms X then works as consultant for an large E-Commerce giant through this consultancy through a fake resume that shows that she has 7 years of experience. Ms X cant code so she calls up a India office of the consultancy who do all the work sometimes even by screen sharing. 4. Hiring managers of large companies are bribed to discriminate against normal Americans and hire these H1Bs through consultancies. 5. Ms x working for consultancy X gets a call from a large company in bay area for interview. Ms Y goes and answers and clears the interview but Ms X joins as employee. In fact answering interview for others is what Ms Y does full time. 6. For telephonic interview many of these consultancies have setup complex systems where Ms Y answers the interiview on Skype but she has a teleprompter in front of her.

Fake H1B:

A lot of these consultancies employ people on H4,F1 or any other visa by telling their customers that these people have H1B. I suspect the large giant companies in bay area already know all this but it works on either don't as or don't tell basis or the hiring managers are bribed.

What I find most upsetting is that the media, overall tech industry does not discuss this at all.

[1] The first is typically graduates from elite Indian engineering institutions (Indian Institutes of Technology, or a few other institutes) who have either gotten a job offer from a US firm for their US office straight out of college, or have come to the US for graduate school and are now entering the workforce. These are, in an overwhelming majority of cases, NOT cheap labour. They are hired at market rate (sometimes even higher, because they typically have strong profiles), they compete with the rest of the student and larger labour pool and get these jobs based purely on merit. For reference, I have plenty of friends who are in this category (I am too), and all of us get paid competitive market salaries. We are also not beholden to any firm and are pretty free to switch jobs if we desire. A lot of us have paid for graduate school in the US too, so it's not like we are just somehow freeriding. This is the kind of crowd you typically encouter in the Bay Area.

[2] The second category typically consists of people who don't have a stellar educational background, and are mostly hired in India by companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro et al. for typically very low salaries (say 1/4th or 1/3rd of what a Googler would get in India). They mostly work on outsourced projects that come from other companies (both in India and outside). Often, these workers are then transfered to the US, where they work as vendors for companies such as Microsoft. They are technically employees of TCS or Wipro or whatever (which have branches in the US), and are on the payroll of these companies, but work for companies like Microsoft. This pool of workers is indeed cheap labor for the big cos because they can a) skimp on stuff such as insurance costs b) typically have to pay less anyway c) the low salary is still pretty high compared to what the worker would have otherwise been able to command in India, d) the worker has relatively lower job mobility because their resumes are probably not as 'employable' as Category [1]

Like it or not, [2] far outnumbers [1]. I don't remember the link right now, but these companies apply for in the order of 1000 H-1B visas every year. Most startups etc, for example, apply for a few or in the order of tens at best.

The illegal bit is of course what a few other commenters wrote—there are these 'consulting firms' which will apply for H-1B on your behalf (you pay them $5K or whatever). If you get through the lottery, you can now move to the US on H-1B. You don't have an actual job though you are on the consulting firm's payroll. You then transfer money to them under the table, which they pay back to you as 'salary' because you are on their payroll after all. In the meanwhile, they try to find a job for you. If they can find a job you will then work wherever they set you up and they take a cut of your salary. This is typically done by people who want to accompany their spouses to the US but don't want to be on H-4 visas which don't let you work.