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India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

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Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#31

Post by shagie »

rupi wrote: post #7

The easiest way to solve this is to salary rank the H1B applicants. Those with the highest salaries get picked; not the ‘lucky ones’ that get through a lottery, which puts a PhD from MIT and a new hire at Tata from a no name school in India on equal footing. And I say this as someone who was on H1B. The current system benefits no one but these visa mills. Edit: for grammar

This suggestion assumes that all H-1B applicants are highly paid technologists. While that is the majority of them, there are French immersion teachers ( https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=french+immersion+teac... ), accountants ( https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=accountant&city=&year... ) and so on that have rather average wages for where they work.

While we're often focused on technology careers here, this approach puts the new hire at Tata on uneven footing with the French teacher.

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#32

Post by aadhavans »

cudgy wrote: post #11
debarshri wrote: post #4

Theres nothing new here. Everyone knows, when you join outsourcing orgs in India, the goal is to go on-site. There is lot of internal politics and toxicity to be in that position to go onsite. Recently, I have seen these orgs. do the same in europe. They are just bombarding the system with applications. What is the motivation you ask? For billable resource, rates are different for resource when they are on-site vs of…

This has been going on for decades and everyone in the industry knows it. Articles like these are simply propaganda to make it seem like something‘s being done about the issue. The system is and has been completely broken and, like most of the immigration policy in the US, it is a façade with the sole purpose of providing cheap labor for US corporations. There are plentiful capable US engineers available to be hired…

> There are plentiful capable US engineers available to be hired

An anecdote, for what it's worth:

My brother graduated from Berkeley last year (CS/Math), and has absolutely struggled to find jobs. His friends have struggled; everyone he's talked to has struggled.

Meanwhile, job postings in the Indian job market (we're both Americans, but are Indian by origin so we tend to keep up with things there) are damn-near overflowing. It's a frustrating position to be in, and it doesn't look like the current administration is going to fix anything.

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#33

Post by jasdi »

rupi wrote: post #7

The easiest way to solve this is to salary rank the H1B applicants. Those with the highest salaries get picked; not the ‘lucky ones’ that get through a lottery, which puts a PhD from MIT and a new hire at Tata from a no name school in India on equal footing. And I say this as someone who was on H1B. The current system benefits no one but these visa mills. Edit: for grammar

Indian IT firms made about $100-120 Billion in revenue last year. That's just handling Corporate Americas IT/BPM ops. Add the rest of the worlds IT stuff and it doubles. Why will this happen if it benefits no one? This story is 30 years old now. And its not the first time the Visa system is being gamed. If you assume Corporate America saves 40-50% in salaries (usually the conservative diff in avg sal level of Indian vs American Engineer) through this route, then someone has to pay that diff to make this stop. Otherwise the incentives have not changed and there is no "easy fix".

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#34

Post by soco »

myrmidon wrote: post #30
PedroBatista wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where there's a will, there's a way.. It would complicate some of these "games", but I'm sure they would implement a kickback system where the person would receive a great salary but it had a "side contract" where it would be required to pay most of it to another company, or just straight up fraud..

This would not be quite that easy to circumvent. The main appeal of H1B abuse is cost effectiveness. If you ruin that by forcing competitive salaries (to even get the H1B in the first place), then that ruins the whole point (and companies are going to engage less in it, i.e. only when needed/"intended"). There is also a huge difference between dealing with a consultancy agency that you suspect engages in "creative vi…

I know a scheme here in Switzerland where the company also provides lodging and services and such, for a cost of course, which cost is then deducted from the big salary thus bringing it to much lower and better palatable levels ("better" for the company doing the tricks of course). It works quite fine in IT because IT is not a protected domain, and much more difficult (not impossible though) in areas like construction - where you have unions and collective agreements.

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#35

Post by dartos »

myrmidon wrote: post #30
PedroBatista wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where there's a will, there's a way.. It would complicate some of these "games", but I'm sure they would implement a kickback system where the person would receive a great salary but it had a "side contract" where it would be required to pay most of it to another company, or just straight up fraud..

This would not be quite that easy to circumvent. The main appeal of H1B abuse is cost effectiveness. If you ruin that by forcing competitive salaries (to even get the H1B in the first place), then that ruins the whole point (and companies are going to engage less in it, i.e. only when needed/"intended"). There is also a huge difference between dealing with a consultancy agency that you suspect engages in "creative vi…

> The main appeal of H1B abuse is cost effectiveness

Yeah but the official purpose of H1B is for companies like to hire highly skilled workers which they can’t find in the US.

Not to hire the cheapest indentured junior devs.

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#36

Post by myrmidon »

mrtksn wrote: post #24
rupi wrote: post #7

The easiest way to solve this is to salary rank the H1B applicants. Those with the highest salaries get picked; not the ‘lucky ones’ that get through a lottery, which puts a PhD from MIT and a new hire at Tata from a no name school in India on equal footing. And I say this as someone who was on H1B. The current system benefits no one but these visa mills. Edit: for grammar

IMHO anything other than making it a meritocracy wouldn't work. Just remove governmnet bureaucracy from the hiring process, abolish work visas and if you are worried about the local workers help them some other way(pay them UBI, provide them with training that can make them more valuable - I don't know what works for specific case but nationality is not a merit). Do you know how do they game the minimum salary requir…

Are you suggesting allowing unrestricted immigration as long as there is a job offer?

That is simply not going to happen in the current political climate (and not under the next government either).

The whole problem from the local workers perspective is that H1B abuse depresses local wages because they now have to compete with other workers from poorer countries; eliminating bureaucracy, government provided job training or UBI does nothing to solve that problem.

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#37

Post by porridgeraisin »

cudgy wrote: post #11
debarshri wrote: post #4

Theres nothing new here. Everyone knows, when you join outsourcing orgs in India, the goal is to go on-site. There is lot of internal politics and toxicity to be in that position to go onsite. Recently, I have seen these orgs. do the same in europe. They are just bombarding the system with applications. What is the motivation you ask? For billable resource, rates are different for resource when they are on-site vs of…

This has been going on for decades and everyone in the industry knows it. Articles like these are simply propaganda to make it seem like something‘s being done about the issue. The system is and has been completely broken and, like most of the immigration policy in the US, it is a façade with the sole purpose of providing cheap labor for US corporations. There are plentiful capable US engineers available to be hired…

> plentiful capable

I heard from a top executive at one of the FAANGs that they are only able to fill 40-50% of their workforce from local hiring.

But, FAANG don't really hire the "visa mill" L1-A immigrants, it's usually H1-B folks that have a m.s/phd in some american university.

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#38

Post by myrmidon »

dartos wrote: post #35
myrmidon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would not be quite that easy to circumvent. The main appeal of H1B abuse is cost effectiveness. If you ruin that by forcing competitive salaries (to even get the H1B in the first place), then that ruins the whole point (and companies are going to engage less in it, i.e. only when needed/"intended"). There is also a huge difference between dealing with a consultancy agency that you suspect engages in "creative vi…

> The main appeal of H1B abuse is cost effectiveness Yeah but the official purpose of H1B is for companies like to hire highly skilled workers which they can’t find in the US. Not to hire the cheapest indentured junior devs.

Absolutely; but "non-abused" H1B positions should not be affected too much, because US companies would pay competitive wages for those (presumably).

The proposal would actually help the intended H1B usecase, because it removes those "indentured junior devs" from the H1B lottery pool.

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#39

Post by DrillShopper »

cudgy wrote: post #11
debarshri wrote: post #4

Theres nothing new here. Everyone knows, when you join outsourcing orgs in India, the goal is to go on-site. There is lot of internal politics and toxicity to be in that position to go onsite. Recently, I have seen these orgs. do the same in europe. They are just bombarding the system with applications. What is the motivation you ask? For billable resource, rates are different for resource when they are on-site vs of…

This has been going on for decades and everyone in the industry knows it. Articles like these are simply propaganda to make it seem like something‘s being done about the issue. The system is and has been completely broken and, like most of the immigration policy in the US, it is a façade with the sole purpose of providing cheap labor for US corporations. There are plentiful capable US engineers available to be hired…

> Companies scream that there’s no availability of workers to build houses, operate restaurants, tend farms, clean facilities, drive trucks, or virtually any other job.

If I hear the phrase "nobody wants to work anymore" I'm going to toss my cookies because a friend of mine just graduated with her CS undergrad, with prior management experience in an IT setting, and devops experience working through university and she is getting no interviews. Nor are many in her graduating class.

Re: India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System

#40

Post by DrillShopper »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #37
cudgy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been going on for decades and everyone in the industry knows it. Articles like these are simply propaganda to make it seem like something‘s being done about the issue. The system is and has been completely broken and, like most of the immigration policy in the US, it is a façade with the sole purpose of providing cheap labor for US corporations. There are plentiful capable US engineers available to be hired…

> plentiful capable I heard from a top executive at one of the FAANGs that they are only able to fill 40-50% of their workforce from local hiring. But, FAANG don't really hire the "visa mill" L1-A immigrants, it's usually H1-B folks that have a m.s/phd in some american university.

With all of the profits they're bringing in they could certainly train up people like the old industrial titans of the mid-20th century.
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