Comments on: H-1B applications for 2006 piling up

Employers have applied for 49,040 H-1B guest worker visas for next fiscal year, more than 75 percent of the program's annual cap.

[h1blegalrights]

Often, when an employer pays an H-1B worker a lesser wage than that paid to U.S. citizen workers doing exactly the same work/duties, there are laws broken and fraud occurring. Government oversight and enforcement as to H-1B wage fraud has been lax, and this has facilitated employers' fraud and unlawful underpayments of H-1B workers.

Notwithstanding the government's lack of oversight, underpaid H-1B workers themselves often have legal (civil and govt/administrative) enforcement mechanisms available that have a lot of teeth. H-1B workers' use of these existing laws could force many employers to stop unlawful underpayments and/or fraud, if more H-1B workers were aware of these laws and knew how to go about pursuing their legal rights.

For example, if a fraudulently underpaid H-1B worker filed a federal fraud complaint, applicable law may allow triple damages (three times the lost wages or other monies) that the worker suffered due to the employer's fraud.

If many more H-1B employers were faced with H-1B workers seeking these significant legal rights and damages/monies, I believe this would depress H-1B underpayments, help equalize wages between H-1B and U.S. workers, and help realign the H-1B program to what it's intended to do (have specialized workers working in specialized areas of need at appropriate wages). Of course, it would also help immensely if there were more government oversight of, and action against, H-1B fraud.

There is more information about H-1B underpayment issues, and H-1B workers' legal rights, at this blog site, which is authored by an immigration attorney and myself (I am an employee-rights attorney):

http://h1blegalrights.com.