Feds: IT firm owes $2.4 million to H-1B workers
An India-based company that counts itself among the largest recipients of controversial H-1B visas has agreed to pay $2.4 million in back wages to 607 allegedly underpaid computer professionals employed through that avenue.
The U.S. Department of Labor said Thursday it had found that Patni Computer Systems Inc., which is headquartered in Mumbai but centers its North American operations in Cambridge, Mass., did not pay the required wages to those temporary foreign workers between January 2004 and December 2005. Patni specializes in global IT outsourcing services.
In this case, Patni was not fined or barred from participating in the H-1B program--as has been the case with some companies in the past--because federal investigators found no "willful violation" of the law, Labor Department spokesman John Chavez told CNET News.com Monday.
Company representatives did not respond immediately to requests for comment from CNET News.com, but a spokesman interviewed by the Associated Press blamed the wage discrepancies on an "accounting error" that has now been fixed.
Patni was also one of nine Indian companies recently singled out by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who said they were troubled by reports that many of the top H-1B users last year were consulting firms that recruit foreign workers, only to outsource them to offshore companies.
In a letter last month, Grassley and Durbin asked Patni to describe how many of the 1,391 H-1Bs it received last year, according to U.S. immigration officials, were used for that purpose.
Grassley and Durbin are sponsoring a bill that would require employers to meet a number of new requirements before they could make H-1B hires. Those obligations would include certifying that they had made a "good faith" effort to hire an American before taking on an H-1B worker and guaranteeing that the foreigner was not displacing a prospective U.S. worker.
Conflicts over wage payments to visa holders are hardly new. Federal auditors reported last year that a few thousand employers that use H-1B visas had not committed to paying wages at the so-called prevailing rate before making their hires.
At the same time, American high-tech companies like Microsoft and Google continue to argue there's a crisis-level shortage in the visas, which allow foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in professional areas to work in the United States for up to 6 years. A U.S. Senate immigration bill that has died at least for now included a provision to elevate that annual quota.
Other members of Congress say they're worried about the world's share of jobs in science and technology fields increasingly migrating away from the United States. The House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology plans to explore suggestions for how the federal government should respond to that challenge at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=47c7367d-80f3-47b5-9f93-225fa016cc40&&Headline=Why+Indians+spent+thousands+to+kill+bill
U.S. companies turned against the bill once they learned that they will no longer have the GREEN-CARD-WHIP. The immigration bill had a provision that allowed individuals to apply for a Green Card. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle fought against this bill in order to keep their Green-Whip.
India didn't like it either, and they lobbied our government to kill the bill.
The Republican patsies, sell-outs, bribe-takers, were more than willing to go along, and they voted to kill the bill.
Listen, industry and foreign interests own your congress, we've got to write our congress people and tell them that we want:
- Equal access to all U.S. jobs for U.S. citizens. Get behind the Grassely-Durbin bill and stop allowing Indian companies to discriminate against U.S. citizens.
- End the Green Whip, allow people to get their own green card. After all, it is the individual who gets themselves through college, not the employer. Employers should no longer be allowed to hang the Green-Card-Whip over the heads of h-1b employees like a Sword of Damacles.
This is exactly why we can't just open the doors to more H1B visa's. It's fair to compete on skills and knowledge. You can't compete when the rules are broken.
I'm just glad the feds busted these guys. It has to make you wonder how many of these firms operate closer to the grey and get away with it...
- Strange mentality!!
- by baivab June 11, 2007 8:32 AM PDT
- Being is US, I find folks gobbling up Chinese made products, without least concern that it's the American Manufacturing Industry that's closing down in consequence. I bet my dollars to doughnuts the same folks who commented here are using a Chinese/Taiwan made computer.... NO, that's irrelevant. What's relevant are the jobs in IT .. the blue-collar jobs, to Hell with the workers @ manufacturing, who are without jobs.
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- It's not US Citizens who want this!
- by kojacked June 11, 2007 12:44 PM PDT
- Was it American citizens who wanted the manufacturing jobs offshored? HELL NO! Is it American citizens who want IT jobs offshored? HELL NO! Is it American citizens that want to continue pouring money into Iraq? HELL NO! It's AMERICAN BUSINESSES and the GOVERNMENT that they control that want this. It's the same greedy few that you find in any country (India included) that want to make big bucks off the backs of the many.
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- little choice
- by BatmanG8 June 12, 2007 1:12 PM PDT
- When the US-made products are removed from the shelves, US
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(6 Comments)Question : WHO, I repeat WHO is demanding for low-cost professionals? WHO, I repeat, WHO is sending work to off-shore? WHO, I repeat WHO is engaging work from low-cost professionals? Answer: Americans, US Citizens. As long as there's a demand, there will be supply, like it or not. In terms of *bending rules*, let's not open the annals of history - 2006/2007 -- special priviledges to China (known for inhuman work conditions, so-called WMDs @ Iraq, enery-lobby decided Ksovo treaty backout, ABM treaty backout, stem-cell research block on religious grounds, refuting global warming, etc. etc.) .... It's US who teaches, others just follow!
This is why laws need to be in place to reign back some of the bad things a purely capitalistic society can bring. This is why H1B visas need to be regulated. This is why Asian chip manufacturers were busted for illegally dumping chips on the US market under cost. This is certainly NOT a reason to say "what the hell, Americans seem to want it so let's just drop the rules".
If the market and economies worked as they should the price of goods in the US should be dropping based on all of the jobs being offshored and associated cost-of-goods decreasing because of it. That in-turn would allow American workers to work for less and be competitive with their offshore counterparts on wages. The fact is that any cost savings due to outsourcing or offshoring goes right into the pockets of business owners and shareholders.
There are no new jobs, no new inventions here in the US such as the computer that these knowledge workers that are displaced by offshoring can shift to. This means that America will turn into a huge welfare state with the few wealthy people holding onto businesses that offshore & outsource everything. The rest will have to beg for scraps from the weathy's table.
consumers have no choice about it. Oh, sure, we can ask the
sales-clones, we can ask the managers, but they do nothing.
We can also do a lot of research to find US-made goods, but it's
not easy or convenient, and we're often suckered even then:
http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoLinks.html#COOL