Job brokers steal wages and entrap Indian tech workers in US

> As graduation nears, he applies for and receives a green card, choosing to permanently reside in the US.

While I understand your point, you are painting too rosy a picture for Shyam. Shyam will not get a green card for 6-13 years[1,2], he will also be on a H1B for all those years. And in my anecdotal experience, he faces a lot of the same prejudice/racism/xenophobia indiscriminately as Deepak in your example. This is not at the Google/Facebook (where likely you only see the Shyams), but at the remaining majority of large tech companies.

[1] depending on EB2 vs EB3, decided by whether he got a PhD/Masters or just a Bachelors from the US. [2] due to the country-of-birth based green card quotas

Your story for Shyam would be wonderful.. I want the immigration system to work like that!

However, it does not. A university graduate that is looking for an entry level position cannot just request a green card! I have been there, actually. As a graduate from a US university, with good grades, wanting to stay in the US. This is how it actually works. Without at the very least a standing offer, a foreigner can't even apply for the green card. The company has to say they can't find a qualified American, prove that the foreigner is qualified have to wait until the green card is handed out before working there. For a recent graduate that would mean an EB-3. Even if you come from Europe, the wait for that is of years. Nobody will hold the job for that long, so that route is impossible.

So this is what a foreigner with an American CS degree has to do. First he gets an F1 visa, and looks for a company that would sponsor him further. He better hope it's a good fit. In that period, he has to keep the company happy, and then get sponsored for an H1-B. Let's remember that H1-B periods are today open for 1 or 2 days a year, thanks to the H1-B mill companies. Then, once we have the H1-B, the company gets to decide if they want to sponsor for permanent residency. This will take years, and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Only after that, we get back to the position where Shyam is in your story.

I am a pretty good example of the real version of Shyam story. I graduated in 2000 from a US university, and went though the immigration maze while working for a variety of US companies. I got my permanent residency in 2011. I did not go through staffing companies, but many people do, because while it provides a way worse service for your employer, it's far, far safer for the employee. If they get hit by a round of layoffs that says 'effective immediately' while getting that green card, they have to go back home, or stay illegally. The staffing company will not lay them off: they will just not pay them while they hand them another position: For all intents and purposes, they become a shell company that keeps their immigration status safe, in exchange for a very big pay cut.

In my case, there was only one close call, when my first employer lost a big contract for their product, and started doing rounds of layoffs, shrinking their workforce in the US by a factor of 10. When I saw what they were doing (and that I did not share the nationality of the company owners), I got another job 2 weeks before my department received their notice.

So If you want more stories of immigrants that come here and compete honestly, and that you'd want to have on your team, wish for better immigration legislation, because the current system actually promotes your scenario B. The immigrants don't like it either.

There's already plenty of laws to regulate them and they work pretty well for the most part.

The problem is if a large company wants to hire contractors directly- and not use a staffing agency. Thats where the laws are unclear and contractors are the ones paying for it.

Not really. If one drops out of a service academy or ROTC before the beginning of junior (3rd) year, one owes nothing. Also, the rules about this are spelled out in explicit detail, not just in the fine print in a caveat-emptor kind of way, but to one's face in a way that is impossible to misinterpret. I very highly doubt the same is true for people coming to the US on H1-B visas.

Charging people for company-specific training is exploitative. It's not a charitable act on the company's part; it's necessary to create, maintain, and grow a competent workforce. Also, training is often marketed as compensation, and companies can't have it two ways: it's either compensation or it's not, and if you market it as such then clawing back the "value" of training is as unethical as clawing back the cash you paid the employee for the time they were there.

I've had a few experiences interviewing South Asian guys on H1-B visas where they were trying to game the interview really hard and it was awkward at the time and I was angry after the fact that this person had made it past a phone screen. Reading what life is like for these guys, I'll have a little more empathy next time.