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Comments on: H-1B visas hit roadblock in Congress

Senate panel votes to double guest worker visas next year. Prospects look dimmer in the House.

Add a Comment (Log in or register) Showing 4 of 5 pages (237 Comments)

Look Out Teachers; The H-1B Visa Gang Wants Your Job
by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 7:25 AM PST: View From Lodi, CA: Look Out Teachers; The H-1B Visa Gang Wants Your Job

By Joe Guzzardi

A recent item in the Las Vegas Review-Journal should raise eyebrows among my teaching colleagues and parents with school age children.

In his warm and fuzzy story titled Teachers Arrive From Philippines, Antonio Planas reported that 51 Filipino teachers recruited in February to work for the Clark County School District have completed their 7,000-mile journey. They are headed directly to the classroom. [August 2, 2005]

Clark County is, according to the story, short about 400 teachers district wide.

But tough, unasked questions remain.

Will the new instructors be able to make the transition from teaching in rural communities half way around the world?one described her village as ?rice and coconut farmers??to teaching in the neon lights of urban Las Vegas?

That would be no small feat. Look, for example, at the personal history of Elvira Ocamia as retold by Planas.

Ocamia, who has never been outside the Philippines, is 56-years-old, married for 36 years and the mother of eight children. She will be living either in an apartment or with other Las Vegas Filipinos, but without her husband or children.

Can Ocamia get off a plane and be emotionally prepared to deal with disruptive students in a demanding classroom?

Another teacher, Elmer Potes, admitted that he speaks broken English with a heavy accent. Will his high-school math students, already sufficiently challenged, be able to understand him?

Ken Record, a long time Clark County resident who follows education issues, said

"The way math is taught today, verbal skills are very important."

Most of the recently arrived teachers admit that all they know about Las Vegas is what they have seen on television and on the Internet.

The Filipino teachers are legally in the U.S. on non-immigrant H-1B visas. And that fact begs a bigger question: did Clark County exhaust every opportunity to hire an American before traveling to the other side of the globe?

Rob Sanchez, who tracks non-immigrant visa issues and is the Webmaster for the invaluable www.zazona.com, says school districts fail to look at unemployed local professionals. Many laid off software engineers, for example, have gone back to school to get education degrees.

Wrote Sanchez in his August 3rd newsletter:

?School districts all over the United States are actively recruiting foreign teachers for our schools. In this case, Filipino math and science teachers on H-1B visas have just arrived in Nevada.

I have talked to many engineers and programmers that have been unable to get teaching jobs in math and science, despite the fact that they went back to school to get education degrees. Despite the growing number of desperate unemployed high-tech workers states like Nevada still claim there is a shortage of these types of teachers. This is just another cruel insult to the growing number of highly educated professionals that can't find meaningful work.?

And when Sanchez says that recruitment of foreign teachers is going on nationwide, he isn?t kidding.
bullet In 2003, Arizona educators traveled to New Delhi for teachers even though the local Scottsdale Unified School District cut 175 jobs during the same period. [Teachers Recruited from India, Pat Kossan, Arizona Republic, March 22, 2003]

bullet In June 2004, the New York Department of Education, crying ?shortage,? added 200 additional teachers from Jamaica to its staff. The state offered two additional bonuses: free legal advice so that they could convert their visas into permanent residency status and free temporary housing.

bullet In September 2001, Cleveland hired 50 math and special education teachers from India. This year 500 pink slips are being sent out in what the Cleveland Plain-Dealer describes as

?The first wave in what will be deep staff cuts in the school district.?

[Nearly 500 Teachers Will Be Cut, Janet Okoben and Ebony Reed, April 23, 2005]

At the beginning of my column I warned that teachers should be leery of the trend to hire H-1Bs.

Conservative estimates put the number of teachers with non-immigrant visas at about 15,000?and growing.

If you wonder why the attraction to H-1Bs is so strong, read the 2004 National Education Association report Trends in Foreign Teacher Recruitment.
From the NEA report:

??Some foreign teachers receive lower pay than comparable teachers in their schools.?

And:

??Some school districts pay their nonimmigrant employees as new teachers, regardless of their experience and qualifications.?

And to the parents, I urge you not to settle for anything less than the best for your child. In today?s job environment, your kid needs the best possible academic foundation. With nearly 14 million unemployed or under-employed Americans, the chances are great that someone in your community with professional experience and impressive academic credentials would jump at the chance to teach. School administrators should forget about traveling around the world to sign up teachers simply because they will work for less. Instead, to ensure a quality education for our children, they must find good teachers locally and pay them well.

Joe Guzzardi [email him], an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.; Like this Reply to this comment

Education smokescreen conceals American worker replacement agenda
by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 7:32 AM PST: Education smokescreen conceals American worker replacement agenda

: " Norm Matloff writes on 17 March:
There has been a ton of items in the press lately bemoaning the allegedly low math and science scores of U.S. kids in international tests. As I've explained before (and will elaborate on later in this posting), that actually is misleading, and the flurry of items in the press is due to very aggressive PR activities by various special interest groups with their own agendas.

(Industry wants to use it to justify an expanded H-1B program and to shut up critics of offshoring, the education lobby wants it to get more federal dollars, etc.)

I'll return to that point later. But first, the enclosed article makes an amazing statement along the way:

* According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 40
* percent of the nation's middle school math teachers do not have the
* equivalent of an undergraduate minor in math. The average starting
* salary of a teacher is only $30,000, whereas the average starting
* salary for a recent college graduate in computer science or
* engineering is $50,000.

* Short of following the British, who have proposed paying experienced
* math teachers more than $100,000, with a guaranteed minimum of
* $70,000, where will we find a way to attract the thousands of
* teachers George Bush wants?

* New York State initiated an innovative program to bring teachers
* from Jamaica for two or four years to teach in New York schools.
* Jamaica, a developing nation where one U.S. dollar equals 65
* Jamaican dollars,

In other words: Paying math teachers a salary attractive enough to draw really good people to the field is, in Prof. Farley's mind, unthinkable.
That already shows that all those recent statements by politicians (both Democratic and Republican) about the need to make science and math education a top priority is total b.s.

But even worse, the author says that an "innovative" alternative is bringing H-1B teachers from Jamaica!

This is stating what the H-1B program is all about--cheap labor--in the baldest possible terms. The National Education Association has said so
too: "Some foreign teachers receive lower pay than comparable teachers in their schools...Some school districts pay their nonimmigrant employees as new teachers, regardless of their experience and qualifications." See my analysis of the teacher situation in Las Vegas, where by the way the school district rejected an applicant who had won a teaching award, at

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/H1BTeachers.txt

Now, about those international math and science scores, I've mentioned many times that aggregate scores which are reported mask the fact that the mainstream kids are doing fine, but our system is still failing to devote enough resources to our social underclass. I've mentioned the TIMSS test, for instance, which showed that if Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa and ten other states--none of which has a substantial underclass--been treated as separate nations, each of them would have been outscored only by Singapore (Prof. David Berliner, "Our Schools Versus Theirs," Washington Post, January 28, 2001).

Now let's look at the test Farley cites, the Program in Student Assessment (PISA). For the 2000 survey (the 2003 report does not have enough data for what I will emphasize here), the U.S. ranked 18th of the
27 OECD countries, with a mean score of 493. However, broken down by race, the means in the U.S. were:

white 530
black 423
Latino 437

This once again shows, tragically, that the U.S. is not doing enough to bring up the educational performance of its underclass. But if one takes the white score as "mainstream," the U.S. would rank 7th out of 27, instead of 18th.

No one wants to discuss these issues. Many years ago, the prime minister of Japan got into trouble for saying that the problems of the U.S. were due to its having an underclass. The way he phrased it was awful, and I joined those who roundly criticized him. I've been a lifelong activist on behalf of minorities and the poor (see my bio, http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html), and I strongly support the notion that diversity is an American strength, contrary to the Japanese prime minister's remarks. But we are morally failing to give the underclass needed help. Pres. Bush (whom I am not a fan of) at least partly recognized the problem in proposing that the new funding for Advanced Placement course teachers be focused on the underclass.
However, he is very wrong to spend it on AP, a program which I consider a sham.

But my main point here is that the claim that there is "something wrong with" the mainstream kids or mainstream science and math education is incorrect and highly misleading.

Norm

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/12/ING2DHLDNU1.DTL

San Francisco Chronicle

Improving math ed -- Bush right about that But where are the teachers coming from?

Jonathan David Farley

Sunday, March 12, 2006

The numbers don't add up for prospective math teachers. I...

In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush stressed the importance of improving math education. He proposed to "train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced placement
courses in math and science, bring 30,000 math and science
professionals to teach in classrooms, and give early help to students who struggle with math."

But where will these teachers come from? And will the training of teachers be sufficient to increase the number of students choosing math and science careers? And why does all this matter?

Because mathematics is the foundation of the natural sciences. It is no coincidence that Isaac Newton, the man who formulated the law of gravitational attraction that revolutionized our understanding of the universe, was also the man who popularized the calculus. And the natural sciences, however pure, are what give us airplanes, cable TV and the Internet.

In the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment, a test that measures math literacy, American 15-year-olds performed worse than their peers in 23 countries, as well as those in Hong Kong.
It's not hard to see why. According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 40 percent of the nation's middle school math teachers do not have the equivalent of an undergraduate minor in math. The average starting salary of a teacher is only $30,000, whereas the average starting salary for a recent college graduate in computer science or engineering is $50,000.

Short of following the British, who have proposed paying experienced math teachers more than $100,000, with a guaranteed minimum of $70,000, where will we find a way to attract the thousands of teachers George Bush wants?

New York State initiated an innovative program to bring teachers from Jamaica for two or four years to teach in New York schools.
Jamaica, a developing nation where one U.S. dollar equals 65 Jamaican dollars, is nonetheless a stable, English-speaking nation with an unbroken democratic tradition; it stands poised to beat the United States in establishing the world's first Institute for Mathematical Methods in Counterterrorism. When teachers for the New York program were recruited on the campus of the University of the West Indies, recruiters found more experienced math and science teachers than they ever dreamed they would.

But you can have all the teachers in the world and still not inspire kids to learn math. My friend Autumn e-mailed me about her nephew,
Joshua: "He's upset because he's asked several of the math teachers why math is important or what are certain formulas used for -- there has to be a use, correct?"

Autumn told her nephew about my work in counterterrorism and for the television crime drama "Numb3rs." Autumn reported, "He's told his math teachers about you as well, and about the show 'Numb3rs.' He's informing them that through something called lattice theory you are managing to fight terrorists -- all with math."

Mathematics is art, and should be appreciated for its beauty, not simply for its utility. But we cannot expect 11 year-olds to cherish
totally order-disconnected topological spaces as much as
professional mathematicians do.

As I first proposed in January 2005, television shows like "Numb3rs"
(or "Medium") -- where the main characters are mathematicians -- could work with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to show kids how math is really used; the council and Texas Instruments are now working together to use "Numb3rs" to promote math literacy in schools.

Another way to inspire kids is to relate mathematics to something they see every day. In order to excite students and draw funding to his school, school superintendent Ronald Ross of Roosevelt, N.Y., has begun looking into the idea of creating a curriculum involving math and counterterrorism. What kinds of topics would students learn?

The opening line of the Oscar-winning movie "A Beautiful Mind" is "Mathematicians won the war." During World War II, the mathematics
underlying cryptography played an important role in military
planning. Winston Churchill admired Alan Turing, the mathematician who had mastered the German codes, recognizing him as the man who had perhaps made the single greatest individual contribution to defeating Hitler.

At Los Alamos, the lab that built the atomic bomb, Cliff Joslyn uses lattice theory to mine data drawn from thousands of reports of terrorist-related activity to discover patterns and relationships that were previously in shadow.

Lattice theoretical methods developed at MIT tell us the probability that we have disabled a terrorist cell, based on how many men we have taken out and what rank they hold in the organization. Lauren McGough, a Massachusetts high school student, tested the accuracy of
this model by getting her classmates to pretend they were
terrorists, passing orders down a fictitious chain of command, essentially confirming what the theory predicts.

High school students could learn algebra, trigonometry, calculus and logic while also learning concrete applications involving homeland security. No longer would students yawn and ask, "What is math good for?" Beauty could defeat both terror and boredom.

Whatever you may think of the State of the Union address, when it comes to supporting math education, we should all see pi to pi.
President Bush is correct when he says that mathematics education in America must improve if the United States is to stay economically competitive, but the stakes are much higher than that. During the Cold War, the United States would not have tolerated a military gap between itself and its adversaries. Yet today, with 61 percent of all U.S. doctorates in math going to foreigners (15 percent to Chinese), we readily accept a "math gap."

Dollar for dollar, the best defense against our adversaries' weapons of mass destruction may be our allies in the Americas, armed with weapons of math instruction.

Improving math education is not merely a smart idea. It is a matter of national security. Algebra is one revolutionary Islamic concept we cannot afford to neglect or ignore.

Jonathan David Farley is a mathematician and science fellow at
Stanford University's Center for International Security and
Cooperation. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

(Please join us in fighting the H-1b increase. The careeer you save may be your own. Please use the following link to express your oppositon to Congress. http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/H1B ); Like this Reply to this comment

Education smokescreen conceals American worker replacement agenda
by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 7:32 AM PST: Education smokescreen conceals American worker replacement agenda

: " Norm Matloff writes on 17 March:
There has been a ton of items in the press lately bemoaning the allegedly low math and science scores of U.S. kids in international tests. As I've explained before (and will elaborate on later in this posting), that actually is misleading, and the flurry of items in the press is due to very aggressive PR activities by various special interest groups with their own agendas.

(Industry wants to use it to justify an expanded H-1B program and to shut up critics of offshoring, the education lobby wants it to get more federal dollars, etc.)

I'll return to that point later. But first, the enclosed article makes an amazing statement along the way:

* According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 40
* percent of the nation's middle school math teachers do not have the
* equivalent of an undergraduate minor in math. The average starting
* salary of a teacher is only $30,000, whereas the average starting
* salary for a recent college graduate in computer science or
* engineering is $50,000.

* Short of following the British, who have proposed paying experienced
* math teachers more than $100,000, with a guaranteed minimum of
* $70,000, where will we find a way to attract the thousands of
* teachers George Bush wants?

* New York State initiated an innovative program to bring teachers
* from Jamaica for two or four years to teach in New York schools.
* Jamaica, a developing nation where one U.S. dollar equals 65
* Jamaican dollars,

In other words: Paying math teachers a salary attractive enough to draw really good people to the field is, in Prof. Farley's mind, unthinkable.
That already shows that all those recent statements by politicians (both Democratic and Republican) about the need to make science and math education a top priority is total b.s.

But even worse, the author says that an "innovative" alternative is bringing H-1B teachers from Jamaica!

This is stating what the H-1B program is all about--cheap labor--in the baldest possible terms. The National Education Association has said so
too: "Some foreign teachers receive lower pay than comparable teachers in their schools...Some school districts pay their nonimmigrant employees as new teachers, regardless of their experience and qualifications." See my analysis of the teacher situation in Las Vegas, where by the way the school district rejected an applicant who had won a teaching award, at

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/H1BTeachers.txt

Now, about those international math and science scores, I've mentioned many times that aggregate scores which are reported mask the fact that the mainstream kids are doing fine, but our system is still failing to devote enough resources to our social underclass. I've mentioned the TIMSS test, for instance, which showed that if Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa and ten other states--none of which has a substantial underclass--been treated as separate nations, each of them would have been outscored only by Singapore (Prof. David Berliner, "Our Schools Versus Theirs," Washington Post, January 28, 2001).

Now let's look at the test Farley cites, the Program in Student Assessment (PISA). For the 2000 survey (the 2003 report does not have enough data for what I will emphasize here), the U.S. ranked 18th of the
27 OECD countries, with a mean score of 493. However, broken down by race, the means in the U.S. were:

white 530
black 423
Latino 437

This once again shows, tragically, that the U.S. is not doing enough to bring up the educational performance of its underclass. But if one takes the white score as "mainstream," the U.S. would rank 7th out of 27, instead of 18th.

No one wants to discuss these issues. Many years ago, the prime minister of Japan got into trouble for saying that the problems of the U.S. were due to its having an underclass. The way he phrased it was awful, and I joined those who roundly criticized him. I've been a lifelong activist on behalf of minorities and the poor (see my bio, http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html), and I strongly support the notion that diversity is an American strength, contrary to the Japanese prime minister's remarks. But we are morally failing to give the underclass needed help. Pres. Bush (whom I am not a fan of) at least partly recognized the problem in proposing that the new funding for Advanced Placement course teachers be focused on the underclass.
However, he is very wrong to spend it on AP, a program which I consider a sham.

But my main point here is that the claim that there is "something wrong with" the mainstream kids or mainstream science and math education is incorrect and highly misleading.

Norm

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/12/ING2DHLDNU1.DTL

San Francisco Chronicle

Improving math ed -- Bush right about that But where are the teachers coming from?

Jonathan David Farley

Sunday, March 12, 2006

The numbers don't add up for prospective math teachers. I...

In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush stressed the importance of improving math education. He proposed to "train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced placement
courses in math and science, bring 30,000 math and science
professionals to teach in classrooms, and give early help to students who struggle with math."

But where will these teachers come from? And will the training of teachers be sufficient to increase the number of students choosing math and science careers? And why does all this matter?

Because mathematics is the foundation of the natural sciences. It is no coincidence that Isaac Newton, the man who formulated the law of gravitational attraction that revolutionized our understanding of the universe, was also the man who popularized the calculus. And the natural sciences, however pure, are what give us airplanes, cable TV and the Internet.

In the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment, a test that measures math literacy, American 15-year-olds performed worse than their peers in 23 countries, as well as those in Hong Kong.
It's not hard to see why. According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 40 percent of the nation's middle school math teachers do not have the equivalent of an undergraduate minor in math. The average starting salary of a teacher is only $30,000, whereas the average starting salary for a recent college graduate in computer science or engineering is $50,000.

Short of following the British, who have proposed paying experienced math teachers more than $100,000, with a guaranteed minimum of $70,000, where will we find a way to attract the thousands of teachers George Bush wants?

New York State initiated an innovative program to bring teachers from Jamaica for two or four years to teach in New York schools.
Jamaica, a developing nation where one U.S. dollar equals 65 Jamaican dollars, is nonetheless a stable, English-speaking nation with an unbroken democratic tradition; it stands poised to beat the United States in establishing the world's first Institute for Mathematical Methods in Counterterrorism. When teachers for the New York program were recruited on the campus of the University of the West Indies, recruiters found more experienced math and science teachers than they ever dreamed they would.

But you can have all the teachers in the world and still not inspire kids to learn math. My friend Autumn e-mailed me about her nephew,
Joshua: "He's upset because he's asked several of the math teachers why math is important or what are certain formulas used for -- there has to be a use, correct?"

Autumn told her nephew about my work in counterterrorism and for the television crime drama "Numb3rs." Autumn reported, "He's told his math teachers about you as well, and about the show 'Numb3rs.' He's informing them that through something called lattice theory you are managing to fight terrorists -- all with math."

Mathematics is art, and should be appreciated for its beauty, not simply for its utility. But we cannot expect 11 year-olds to cherish
totally order-disconnected topological spaces as much as
professional mathematicians do.

As I first proposed in January 2005, television shows like "Numb3rs"
(or "Medium") -- where the main characters are mathematicians -- could work with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to show kids how math is really used; the council and Texas Instruments are now working together to use "Numb3rs" to promote math literacy in schools.

Another way to inspire kids is to relate mathematics to something they see every day. In order to excite students and draw funding to his school, school superintendent Ronald Ross of Roosevelt, N.Y., has begun looking into the idea of creating a curriculum involving math and counterterrorism. What kinds of topics would students learn?

The opening line of the Oscar-winning movie "A Beautiful Mind" is "Mathematicians won the war." During World War II, the mathematics
underlying cryptography played an important role in military
planning. Winston Churchill admired Alan Turing, the mathematician who had mastered the German codes, recognizing him as the man who had perhaps made the single greatest individual contribution to defeating Hitler.

At Los Alamos, the lab that built the atomic bomb, Cliff Joslyn uses lattice theory to mine data drawn from thousands of reports of terrorist-related activity to discover patterns and relationships that were previously in shadow.

Lattice theoretical methods developed at MIT tell us the probability that we have disabled a terrorist cell, based on how many men we have taken out and what rank they hold in the organization. Lauren McGough, a Massachusetts high school student, tested the accuracy of
this model by getting her classmates to pretend they were
terrorists, passing orders down a fictitious chain of command, essentially confirming what the theory predicts.

High school students could learn algebra, trigonometry, calculus and logic while also learning concrete applications involving homeland security. No longer would students yawn and ask, "What is math good for?" Beauty could defeat both terror and boredom.

Whatever you may think of the State of the Union address, when it comes to supporting math education, we should all see pi to pi.
President Bush is correct when he says that mathematics education in America must improve if the United States is to stay economically competitive, but the stakes are much higher than that. During the Cold War, the United States would not have tolerated a military gap between itself and its adversaries. Yet today, with 61 percent of all U.S. doctorates in math going to foreigners (15 percent to Chinese), we readily accept a "math gap."

Dollar for dollar, the best defense against our adversaries' weapons of mass destruction may be our allies in the Americas, armed with weapons of math instruction.

Improving math education is not merely a smart idea. It is a matter of national security. Algebra is one revolutionary Islamic concept we cannot afford to neglect or ignore.

Jonathan David Farley is a mathematician and science fellow at
Stanford University's Center for International Security and
Cooperation. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

(Please join us in fighting the H-1b increase. The careeer you save may be your own. Please use the following link to express your oppositon to Congress. http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/H1B ); Like this Reply to this comment

Lowest Paying Employers of H-1B FY 2004

by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 8:00 AM PST

Naming Names: Lowest Paying Employers of H-1B FY 2004

(If you are an unemployed American IT worker here is the reason you can't get a job or if you have been laid off and foreced to another much lower paying IT job. The H-1b program is totally corrupt. Here is the URL for the report which you may find easier to read becase it is color coded. - stopoffshoring)

http://www.programmersguild.org/docs/lowest_paying_2004.htm

Lowest Paying Employers of H-1B Computer Workers FY 2004

An analysis of the employers who are paying the lowest H-1B wages reveals that these companies are disproportionately run by Indian nationals, hiring almost exclusively young Indian nationals to displace American workers in our own country, in blatant violation of EEOC, sex, age and national origin laws. These wages are for jobs that require a BS degree and specialized experienced beyond what a new college graduate would possess. So why are they being paid significantly less that new U.S. graduates? For more info search www.h1b.info (Compiled by The Programmers Guild, June 2005) (Read More)

The first list only includes employers who applied for 100 or more H-1B visas:
Rank Employer (100+ H-1Bs requested in 2004) Number of Applications Number of H-1B Workers Average Annual Salary
1 AMERICAN DIGICOM CORP

Check out the waving American Flag on their contact page â?? what patriots. They are in Silicon Valley, among the highest cost of living in the US. LCAs filed by VP Alex Wong.

www.digicomgroup.com/contact.htm

American Digicom is a rare exception being a real company that creates something of value. The majority in this list are bodyshops that do not generate any marketable product and have no direct need for the H-1Bs that they secure.
3 993 $32,600.00
2 JAGS SOFTWARE INC

Their corporate website conceals the owners' identities. (www.jagssoftwareinc.com) However they did sponsor "Miss Indian America" : www.spiritofindia.com and the 1000+ LCAs were requested by VP JAGJIT MALHOTRA (Indian)

See THIS LINK page 19. In 2003 one Jagjit Malhotra was an investor in India to start a backoffice business in the USA called "Compudyne Winfosystems"
2 1982 $35,000.00
3 DIBON SOLUTIONS INC.

Site in India. Immigration details on their website â?? that is not for clients or U.S. workers: www.dibon.com/peopleco.htm www.dibon.com/h1b.htm Business model is some developers at client site with support developers in India: www.dibon.com/pdf/offshore.pdf
53 227 $36,649.78
4 System Soft Technologies LLC

Photos of System Soft H-1Bs: www.hireamericancitizens.org/tampatrib001.html
26 134 $36,799.93
5 TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED

Tata is a huge predatory Indian consulting company, as the number of H-1B applications suggests. The Board of Directors are all Indians. They have 52,000 employees and are able to undercut US consulting companies for large US contracts have shipping the work to India, skirting EEOC and other labor requirements imposed upon the competition.
Mr. Ratan N. Tata
Chairman
524 5200 $37,811.90
6 Cambridge Resource Group, Inc.

All five USA Board of Directors have Indian names, and they have two sites in India, vs one site in the US:

http://crgsoft.com/usadirectors.html
http://crgsoft.com/contact.html
104 363 $37,923.02
7 ALLIED INFORMATICS, INC

Immigration links on their website â?? link to Indian immigration attorney: www.alliedinformatics.com/Info.html Same attorney in employment case involving allied: www.lawskills.com/case/ga/id/20188/
63 209 $38,255.22
8 USP, LLC

Email contact name is â??Raviâ?? â?? they are bodyshop: www.uspcorp.com/Home.htm
125 125 $38,579.84
9 PROMPTCARE HEALTH SERVICES IN

PromptCare is a healthcare company in Glendale CA, a minor H-1B user until 10/2004 when they applied for 991 Software Engineers on one LCA. Very odd. DOJ should investigate.
1 991 $39,224.00
10 Ved Software Services Inc

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020314/biz.htm

Ved Software Services Inc (VSSI) of Michigan, USA, and Cheeta Learning of Connecticut, USA, joined together to offer the accelerated Cheetah Learning Programme that compressed 180 hours of examination preparation time into a five-day programme and the project manager took the examination online on the fifth day.

Mr Sampath Seshadri, Chief Executive of VSSI, told reporters that his company had been licensed by Cheetah Learning to provide the training in India, Singapore and Japan. UNI
69 345 $39,672.65
11 Prolific Technologies, Inc.

This page found in google is gone from their website. They have an office in India and, from the LCAs the president's name is Hanumanth Kanchiraju

contact us ... Coorporate Office 6850 Ulster Ct Alpharetta GA 30005 770-889-6183 Phone 678-623-3694 Fax contactus@prolific-technologies.com India Office 6-1-103/113, Sri ...
www.prolific-technologies.com/contact-us/ - Supplemental Result - Similar pages
41 350 $39,682.00
12 Future Technology Foundation, Inc

http://www.ftf-usa.com/ - Click on â??Contactsâ?? â?? another group of Indians fronting as an American corporation:

Sanchayita Gupta
President
[mailto:sanchayita@ftf-usa.com] sanchayita@ftf-usa.com
732-767-1849

Bud Gupta
Vice President
[mailto:bud@ftf-usa.com] bud@ftf-usa.com
732-767-1748

Avijit Chakravarty
Project Manager
[mailto:achaks@ftf-usa.com] achaks@ftf-usa.com
732-767-0752

Paramita Bhadra
Marketing Manager
[mailto:paramita@ftf-usa.com] paramita@ftf-usa.com
732-767-1943

Address Book

Future Technology Foundation, Inc.
414 Main Street
Metuchen, NJ 08840,USA
Tel : 732-767-0093
Fax : 732-767-1379

India Operation
Future Technology Foundation, Inc. Mr. Bud Gupta
(CEO & VP â?? International Operations)
Tel : 98316 42060
[mailto:ftfcal@ftf-usa.com] ftfkol@ftf-usa.com
Our Associates
HubGlobal Technologies
402/403, New York Plaza
Judges bunglow Road. VastraPur,Ahmedabad 380015
PH: 30127378
Tele Fax: 30120378
31 119 $39,716.92
13 HIDEF Technologies Inc

Over 100 LCAs, all filed mid 2004. Based on Vermont. Canâ??t even find a URL for the company. Found their address: www.bluewatercenter.com/suites/tenants.html Suite 2165 â?? not much bigger than a restroom. Would not hold more than about 4 employees. This appears to be immigration scam:
www.bluewatercenter.com/suites/secondfloor.html
128 128 $39,815.48
14 RADIANT SOFT SOL, INC.

Their business is IT outsourcing and offshoring: www.radiantsoftsol.com/ito_offshore_services.asp

Owner Venkat (Indian) posts the following on an Indian Student forum - explicitly citing his own race as a criteria for the jobs: http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/ekta/ekta1/Ads/Ad1.htm

We sponsor work VISA. Students on F1 with OPT/CPT are welcome. If interested please submit your resume to careers@radiantsoftsol.com

We need your help in reaching this message out to all our Indian students who qualify the above mentioned criteria. We need to address interested candidates in person so that we can explain the whole model to you. We now are aiming at extending our help to all our Indian students to get benefited. Please reply with your contact number so that we can talk to you in detail.

Venkat
Radiant Soft Sol Inc
847-228-1234x20
126 290 $39,925.08
15 INFOTECH SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS, INC. 21 505 $39,996.69
16 ANJANI ETECH SOLUTIONS INC

http://www.iplease-michigan.com/write.asp?state=MI&category=874215

Anjani Etech Solutions Inc
35323 Turner Dr
Sterling Heights, MI 48312
586-979-4554 MAP

300 employees â?? tech company â?? cannot find their website â?? low profile - small office - from LCAs President is PRASAD PONNAM
5 299 $40,000.00
17 Materials Software System Inc,

Feb 2005 help wanted in Hindu newspaper:

www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/jobs/advt/05020222.htm

But their US web job listing submit crashes:

www.materialsoft.com/jobs/index.htm

They have sites in India, and managers are nearly all Indian:

Contact:

PRESIDENT(VENU MADHAV)

Venu's Email address venu@materialsoft.com

BOB STEVENSON

Bob's Email address bob@materialsoft.com

ASHWIN

Contact for Overseas( Other than US)Placements ashwin@materialsoft.com

RAMESH RAGHAVAN

Contact for Global Placements raghav@materialsoft.com

VASANTHA REDDY

Vasantha's Email address vasantha@materialsoft.com

LALITHA VANI

Lalitha's Email address lalitha@materialsoft.com

PRADEEP SANGU

Pradeep's Email address Pradeep@materialsoft.com

JOHN

Contact for Global Placements john@materialsoft.com

SRINIVAS ENDRA

Srinivas's Email address is sri@materialsoft.com

VASU DEV

Vasu's mail address is vasu@materialsoft.com
44 140 $40,000.00
18 MANAS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INC

From LCA: President: GAYATRI PONNAM - STERLING HEIGHTS, MI , 2100 15 MILE RD , SUITE A

167 workers requested in 2004, but canâ??t find a website for them.
3 167 $40,000.00
19 ALLIED BUSINESS CONSULTING, INC.

http://www.abcinc-us.com/

Our trained and skilled consultants / programmers in the Indian centre can supplement our on site services. More Info >>
177 259 $40,166.02
20 CMC Americas Inc.

According to their website www.cmc-americas.com CMC is 100% owned by TCS (TATA Consulting). See rank #5.

The bottom of this website www.cmcltd.com is "copyright INDIA."
23 171 $40,487.54
21 Premier Technologies, Inc.

From LCAs President: VARA YERRAGUDI (Indian)
24 106 $40,584.91
22 Magna Infotech Ltd.

Three sites in India: www.magnai.com/contact/globalpres.htm#in

Photos of India development centers: www.magnai.com/corporate/infrastruct.htm

60 591 $41,309.59
23 Yash Technologies, Inc.

www.yash.com/inside/chairman.html

Manoj Baheti - Chairman & CEO (Indian)
155 480 $41,325.09
24 HCL TECHNOLOGIES AMERICA INC. 143 3161 $41,501.20
25 BEECHWOOD COMPUTING LIMITED 26 235 $41,574.47
26 Infinite Computing Systems, Inc. 56 560 $41,602.77
27 Patni Computer Systems, Inc.

Management team is 100% Indian Nationals:

http://www.patni.com/corp/corp_manage.htm

1867 3770 $41,637.34
28 Software Solutions Group, Inc. 26 152 $41,754.72
29 Magna Systems International, Inc. 155 158 $41,835.11
30 V-Soft Consulting Group, Inc. 276 276 $41,991.31
31 Semafor Technologies, LLC 44 130 $42,000.00
32 CORPORATE COMPUTER SERVICES,INC 139 152 $42,000.00
33 In-Venture Soft, Inc. 101 108 $42,000.00
34 Blue Frog Solutions, Inc. 2 992 $42,006.97
35 Caliber Consulting Corporation 12 115 $42,123.48
36 LANCO GLOBAL SYSTEMS INC 40 220 $42,159.09
37 Larsen & Toubro Infotech Limited 632 632 $42,213.30
38 Vision Systems Group, Inc. 106 163 $42,441.72
39 Infomerica, Inc. 56 235 $42,466.02
40 Altech Star Inc. 7 175 $42,628.57
41 Ramsoft Sytems Inc. 210 211 $42,739.85
42 McNally Systems Inc. 59 109 $42,837.94
43 K-Soft Information Technologies, Inc. 58 160 $42,916.12
44 Cyber World Solutions, Inc. 66 259 $42,922.78
45 V.L.S SYSTEMS INC. 64 359 $43,194.99
46 Xtreme Worldwide Solutions, Inc. 25 239 $43,277.51
47 Global Consulting Group 262 364 $43,366.43
48 cyberThink, Inc. 98 262 $43,395.82
49 OBJECT TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS, INC. 134 134 $43,550.60
50 JCG TECHNOLOGIES INC 27 115 $43,573.91
51 Quinnox, Inc. 18 165 $43,634.79
52 RedSalsa Technologies, Inc. 190 194 $43,685.51
53 R SYSTEMS INC 51 214 $43,717.35
54 NTRUST INFOTECH PRIVATE LIMITED 98 193 $43,806.53
55 Inforide Technologies, LLC 41 137 $44,103.07
56 iTech US, Inc. 364 490 $44,264.76
57 Quintegra Solutions Limited 49 890 $44,565.26
58 ISR INFO WAY, INC. 196 196 $44,630.87
59 SOFTWARE RESEARCH GROUP,INC 65 113 $44,654.87
60 ObjectWin Technology Inc. 104 138 $44,659.42
61 Interpro, Inc. 114 122 $44,717.14
62 Divihn Integration Inc. 78 163 $44,920.25
63 TECHNOSOFT CORPORATION 54 311 $44,935.36
64 Mphasis Corporation 131 3696 $44,947.58
65 Objectsoft Group Inc., 157 157 $45,025.48
66 NetSoft Technologies Corp Inc 242 255 $45,045.69
67 NIIT (USA), INC. 244 1090 $45,049.18
68 CDI Corporation 35 158 $45,198.08
69 Savvy System Consultants Inc. 20 160 $45,290.41
70 ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS, INC 30 490 $45,512.87
71 Compuware Corporation 24 194 $45,553.08
72 HPS America, Inc. 158 7762 $45,689.67
73 Boden Services, Inc. 36 185 $45,735.14
74 Integrated Software Solutions, Inc. 218 218 $45,742.36
75 Jean Martin Inc. 41 196 $45,824.49
76 eBusiness Application Solutions, Inc. 251 3338 $45,860.58
77 PRG Systems, Inc. 16 115 $45,960.89
78 Tekstrom Inc 55 139 $46,005.04
79 THE BRANDON GROUP, INC. 120 120 $46,030.59
80 IBM Global Service India Pvt. Ltd. 128 6101 $46,311.02
81 SAVEN TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED 19 125 $46,400.00
82 LOGIC BYTES INC 113 126 $46,757.94
83 Verinon Technology Solutions Ltd 126 126 $46,796.83
84 Mascon IT Limited 30 210 $46,913.02
85 Waltech Inc 79 102 $46,991.94
86 CYBERTECH SYSTEMS&SOFTWAREINC 16 170 $47,029.41
87 RJT Compuquest Inc. 49 213 $47,093.90
88 MIRACLE SOFTWARE SYSTEMS INC. 39 390 $47,376.77
89 SYSTIME COMPUTER CORPORATION 23 682 $47,465.61
90 Lason Systems, Inc. 7 122 $47,500.00
91 Silicon Software Solutions 14 131 $47,664.76
92 Wipro Limited 153 13796 $47,717.92
93 ALTSOFT INC 68 229 $47,842.14
94 Tata Infotech Limited 262 2914 $47,861.03
95 Diaspark, Inc. 261 261 $47,990.11
96 American Solutions Inc 145 163 $48,035.55
97 SCANDENT GROUP INC. 33 410 $48,134.66
98 Zolon Tech, Inc. 53 130 $48,305.38
99 Silicon Valley Systech, Inc. 9 117 $48,335.20
100 PARADIGM INFOTECH INC 23 124 $48,354.84

Key:

Rank: The employer ranking from 1 to 100 from lowest wage to highest.
Employer: The employer name
Number of Applications: The number of Labor Condition Applications (LCA) made.
Number of H-1B Workers: The total number of H-1B workers requested on those LCAs.
Average Annual Salary: The average wage to be paid to those workers.

Color Key:

The background color compares the average wage paid by the employer to the overall wages paid in the U.S. to workers in computer and mathematical occupations according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2004 Occupations Employment Survey.
Less than 10th percentile of $33,780
Less than the 25 percentile of $45,820
Less than the Median of $62,620

Methodology

1. The raw wage data comes from the H-1B disclosure data at www.flcdatacenter.com. Note that this data is for Labor Condition Applications (LCA) made, not H-1B visas granted.

The only "job code" in the LCA data is a USCIS job code. The USCIS job code for computer occupations is "030". Unfortunately, the USCIS lumps everything remotely computer-related as a computer occupation, from Jr. Programmer to Chief Information Officer, to Business Analyst. In addition, many jobs that clearly are not computer-related (e.g. mechanical engineer, accountant) somehow get classified under job code "030" in the disclosure data.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) classifies the following job titles as "Computer and Mathematical Occupations".
Computer and information scientists, research
Computer programmers
Computer software engineers, applications
Computer software engineers, systems software
Computer support specialists
Computer systems analysts
Database administrators
Network and computer systems administrators
Network systems and data communications analysts
Computer specialists, all other
Actuaries
Mathematicians
Operations research analysts
Statisticians
Mathematical technicians
Mathematical scientists, all other

2. After extracting all the records with USCIS job code "030", pattern matching was used to map the job title given in the LCA with Bureau of Labor Statistics job titles and job codes. About 6% of the records were not computer-related as defined by the BLS and discarded.

3. Using the LCA records, the average wage for each employer was calculated.

4. The employers were ordered by average H-1B wage.

4. To make this list an employer had to have requested a total of at least 100 H-1B workers on LCAs
Lowest Paying Employers of H-1B Computer Workers FY 2004

Minimum of 25 H-1B Workers Requested on Labor Condition Applications

Rank Employer (25+ H-1Bs requested in 2004) Number of Applications Number of H-1B Workers Average Salary
1 IVS CONSULTING, INC.

Seeking exclusively H-1B workers on Indian job board: http://in.3wjobs.com/j__s__Banking%20and%20Finance.html - they require the workers to place a $1000 deposit for consideration - is this a "fair wage" for SAP consultant with 2+ years experience?

LCA: President AJAY THOMAS

SAP Consultant
Exp: 2 years IVS consulting.com
We are a consulting firm based in Houston , TX looking to sponsor H1B visas for senior software professionals with your skills for our client needs in the US. This is a full time opportunity for 3 years based in the US. We also do sponsor Green Cards for selected candidates. Candidates should have excellent communication skills and willing to commit $1000 deposit for the recruitment effort which will be refundable once the candidate is in the US on a project. Candidates that are prepared to commit to the deposit as stated above will only be considered. Please send us your update ...
Show details Tell a friend
20 96 $26,458.33
2 Indus Valley Software, Inc.

LCA: President AJAY THOMAS (Same owner as rank #1 IVS Consulting)
13 57 $26,877.19
3 Global Enterprise Management Solutions, Inc

Has software development center in India. LCA President Rahul Reddy. CEO: Suresh Ketha
14 72 $31,111.11
4 ASTERIX CONSULTING, INC

LCA: Meenu Shara
7 28 $32,321.43
5 AMERICAN DIGICOM CORP

(See rank #1 in the 100+ list)
3 993 $32,600.00
6 infoNero Inc.

http://infonero.com/7101.html "plans of setting up huge infrastructure in North Dakota to retain the jobs that are being outsourced overseas and have them executed locally by employing local candidates & Software Engineers from North Dakota University."

So they oppose offshoring, but maintain an office in Bangalore, and LCA VP is Saravana Rangaswamy

http://infonero.com/7128.html

Overseas Office:
infoNERO India Pvt. Ltd.
28/1 'C', Artillery Road
Ulsoor
Bangalore 560008, INDIA
Contact: Ashwini Kumar - Recruiter
ashoo@infonero.com
TEL: 91-80-23338554
7 45 $32,900.00
7 MICROSOLVE CONSULTING INC

LCA VP: ANURADHA NAGENDER

http://naukrisewa.com/about.htm Naukri Sewa.Com is the unit of Kerin Recruitment Consultants which is a sister consern of Microsolve Consulting Inc. (USA). while microsolve is an information technology service company that provides consulting & application development services to broad range of industries & specializes in ERP & Server Applications, Kerin Recruitment Consultants is man power provider to Microsolve from INDIA.
1 30 $33,000.00
8 Xyant Technology, Inc.

Listed as "Minority/Woman/Disadvantaged" contractor - Indian Immigrants given preference over native-born Americans solely because they are not white:

Xyant Technology, Inc.
Sreenivasan Rajappa
1108 Rambling Oaks Drive
Norman, OK 73072
Phone: (405) 447-8337 / Fax: (405) 447-8394
Email: government@xyant.com
15 41 $34,030.17
9 Ozark Computer Consultants, Inc. 41 43 $34,595.91
10 CompSys Technologies, Inc. 42 64 $34,757.81
11 UIBCS INC 1 50 $35,000.00
12 JAGS SOFTWARE INC 2 1982 $35,000.00
13 E* PRO, INC. 11 56 $35,790.86
14 Integral Strategies, Inc. 66 66 $35,991.62
15 DONEPUDI ASSOCIATES INC. 13 31 $36,129.03
16 ePower,Inc. 28 28 $36,285.71
17 SMARTOUTSOURCE, INC 23 41 $36,463.27
18 Mirage Software, Inc. 46 51 $36,580.78
19 DIBON SOLUTIONS INC. 53 227 $36,649.78
20 System Soft Technologies llc 26 134 $36,799.93
21 AMSOL, INC. 89 89 $36,903.66
22 MSYS, INC. 9 44 $36,909.09
23 MEGASYSTEMS INC. 29 29 $36,965.52
24 ZYLOG SYSTEMS LTD DBA ZSL INC 32 32 $37,000.00
25 OMNITECH SYSTEMS 12 28 $37,214.29
26 Cybersoft Technologies, Inc. 8 36 $37,222.22
27 Intelli Infotek, LLC 53 53 $37,426.80
28 Soft Computer Consultants, Inc. 12 51 $37,454.05
29 TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED 524 5200 $37,811.90
30 ECommercePioneer.Com, Inc. 18 80 $37,827.50
31 INFODAT INTERNATIONAL, INC. 15 69 $37,913.04
32 Cambridge Resource Group, Inc. 104 363 $37,923.02
33 LANCO GLOBAL SYSTEMS, INC 7 39 $38,205.13
34 ALLIED INFORMATICS, INC 63 209 $38,255.22
35 USP, LLC 184 184 $38,316.77
36 4C Solutions, Inc. 32 32 $38,368.75
37 COMPUTER CONSULTANTS INC 15 40 $38,500.00
38 E-Computers Technologies, Inc. 8 32 $38,500.00
39 VenturiSoft, Inc. 22 32 $38,500.00
40 MEGASYSTEMS INC. 48 56 $38,571.43
41 ALLSERVE SYSTEMS CORP 13 43 $38,784.44
42 Ipelion Global Services, Inc. 6 26 $39,153.85
43 Worldwide Software Services, Inc. 70 73 $39,189.88
44 PROMPTCARE HEALTH SERVICES IN 1 991 $39,224.00
45 MAQ TECHNOLOGIES INC. 48 49 $39,346.94
46 EZen Computer Servcies Inc 15 32 $39,355.47
47 AR Systems 55 56 $39,357.14
48 FUTURETECH CONSULTANTS, LLC 15 47 $39,400.43
49 Data Point Systems, Inc 10 78 $39,538.46
50 E METHODS INC 9 45 $39,555.56
51 TECHNOCREST SYSTEMS, INC. 32 32 $39,627.90
52 MAQ TECHNOLOGIES INC 36 36 $39,666.67
53 Ved Software Services Inc 69 345 $39,672.65
54 Prolific Technologies, Inc. 41 350 $39,682.00
55 Future Technology Foundation, Inc 31 119 $39,716.92
56 OMNISOFT INC 32 44 $39,731.82
57 HIDEF Technologies Inc 128 128 $39,815.48
58 IOR TECHNOLOGIES INC. 29 40 $39,837.20
59 RADIANT SOFT SOL, INC. 126 290 $39,925.08
60 Objects Worldwide,Inc 51 51 $39,960.78
61 INFOTECH SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS, INC. 21 505 $39,996.69
62 IT SPIN INC 41 41 $39,996.92
63 SOFTPATH SYSTEMS, INC 9 46 $40,000.00
64 MSYS, INCORPORATION 7 28 $40,000.00
65 MANASINFORMATIONTECHNOLOGYINC 3 167 $40,000.00
66 Infoyogi LLC 6 30 $40,000.00
67 Materials Software System Inc 11 50 $40,000.00
68 Materials Software System Inc, 44 140 $40,000.00
69 Anjani Etech Solutions, Inc. 10 441 $40,033.06
70 PREMIER IT SOLUTIONS,INC 91 93 $40,161.29
71 ALLIED BUSINESS CONSULTING, INC. 177 259 $40,166.02
72 Optech Consulting, Inc 46 46 $40,173.91
73 Axiom Systems, Inc. 32 32 $40,218.75
74 Systems Technology Group, Inc. 29 37 $40,340.54
75 Iss Consultants,Inc. 3 30 $40,433.33
76 Ultimo Software Soutions Inc. 75 75 $40,437.33
77 CMC Americas Inc. 23 171 $40,487.54
78 Premier Technologies, Inc. 24 106 $40,584.91
79 PRIMESOFT, INC 27 27 $40,740.74
80 eTransX, Inc 9 36 $40,777.78
81 VIRTUE GROUP LLC 25 67 $40,940.30
82 Think Development Systems Inc. 9 58 $41,099.41
83 LEKHA, INC 63 63 $41,103.13
84 Silicus Technologies, Inc. 5 28 $41,142.86
85 TEJ TECHNOLOGIES, INC. 6 60 $41,183.33
86 Indus Valley Consultants, Inc. 10 30 $41,200.00
87 ITC INFOTECH (USA), INC. 31 31 $41,289.03
88 Magna Infotech Ltd. 60 591 $41,309.59
89 Yash Technologies, Inc. 155 480 $41,325.09
90 Ecal Solution, Inc. 11 60 $41,333.33
91 OrionSoft, Inc. 70 74 $41,351.35
92 AJAY International Inc 18 31 $41,354.84
93 Uni Resource, Inc. 10 58 $41,390.66
94 INDUSA TECHNICAL CORP 59 59 $41,410.08
95 Sanket Systems Inc. 9 54 $41,419.72
96 TERASOFT INTERNATIONAL INC 16 52 $41,444.96
97 DELIGENT,,LLC 9 45 $41,486.50
98 GENOME INTERNATIONAL CORP. 22 63 $41,499.21
99 HCL TECHNOLOGIES AMERICA INC. 143 3161 $41,501.20
100 Software Technology International Corporation 56 68 $41,543.43

This table was created identically to the first table except that the standard for inclusion was Labor Condition Applications 25 workers.

No employer on this list was paying more than the national 25th percentile for Computer and Mathematical workers of $45,820.
"

(Join us in protesting the H-1b incresae. Use the folling URL to express your opposition.

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/H1B)

Like this Reply to this comment

such a bad experience
by chinna_sss March 11, 2007 7:00 PM PDT: Hi guys,
I had a such a bad experience on this company. Dont belive all this things. you will lost your life. Be care full what your doing.; Like this View reply Hide reply
Processing

Lowest Paying Employers of H-1B FY 2004

by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 8:00 AM PST

Like this Reply to this comment

such a bad experience
by chinna_sss May 2, 2008 5:54 PM PDT: Hi guys,
I had a such a bad experience on this company. Dont belive all this things. you will lost your life. Be care full what your doing.; Like this View reply Hide reply
Processing

Computech must pay old wages (Yet another example of H-1b being underpaid)

by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 8:02 AM PST

Computech must pay old wages
Labor Dept.: Immigrants were underpaid

BY JEWEL GOPWANI
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

November 23, 2005

A Bingham Farms-based computer staffing firm plans to pay $2.25 million in back wages after the U.S. Department of Labor said it didn't adequately pay 232 employees, according to a settlement between the government and the tech firm. (Read More)

In one of the nation's largest settlements involving wages paid to immigrants, Computech Corp. also must pay $400,000 in fines to the Department of Labor, which says the company paid its workers lower wages than immigration law requires and failed to pay the workers for time they were idle, also a requirement for immigrants working in the technology industry.

Vasudeva Patchava, a former Computech employee, said the company agreed to pay him at least $53,000 a year. Instead he received $35,000 a year.

With that salary, Patchava couldn't afford to buy a house and bring his family to Michigan, so they stayed with relatives for six months in Akron, Ohio, before they could reunite when the company moved him out of Michigan.

Despite agreeing to pay the back wages, Computech, which has done work for the City of Detroit and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said it did nothing wrong.

"While we believe our workers were fully and fairly compensated, we have agreed to settle these allegations from 1999 and 2000 so that we can move on with our business," Computech President Ram Kancharla said in a statement.

The settlement, approved by an administrative judge with the Labor Department last week, also bars Computech from bringing workers to the United States for 18 months.

"The Department of Labor aggressively enforces the law to ensure that temporary foreign workers are compensated fully and fairly," said Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao. "Abuse of the temporary foreign worker program is not tolerated and violators, as this case shows, are vigorously pursued."

Patchava stayed with Computech between 1999 and 2003. "I didn't want to go to a different employer and get into the same situation," said Patchava, 44, and now living in Cupertino, Calif. He also felt pressured to stick with Computech because the company sponsored his temporary visa.

The unpaid wages for the Computech workers stem from August 1998 to May 2000 and average about $9,700 per worker, according to the settlement. The company owes wages ranging from $168.10 to $41,791.84.

The Department of Labor wouldn't say when employees were to receive their back wages, but Computech is supposed to make the payments in $70,000 quarterly installments until August 2014.

The employees who were allegedly underpaid were brought to the United States legally on temporary H-1B visas.

Such visas give immigrants who hold bachelor's degrees permission to work in the United States in professional occupations, such as technology or health care.

According to immigration law, those employees are entitled to a generally accepted wage for computer programmers for about 40 hours a week, even when they do not have assignments. The aim of the law, immigration law experts say, is so companies pay the prevailing wage and do not undercut wages paid to American workers.

The $2.25-million settlement is about $2 million less than what the Department of Labor said the company owed in March.

"We took a position that much of the charges the Department of Labor had made were based on out-of-date and faulty documentation," said William Stock, Computech's attorney.

Contact JEWEL GOPWANI at 313-223-4550 or gopwani@freepress.com. "

Like this Reply to this comment

It's an example that the H1 laws work
by JoeF2 April 1, 2006 9:48 AM PST: There will always be some unscrupulous companies that violate laws. Best example: Enron...

That does not mean that the H1 is bad. On the contrary, the fact that such companies are exposed and fined shows that the H1 law has bite. It gets enforced.
So, again, thanks for making my point...; Like this

Computech must pay old wages (Yet another example of H-1b being underpaid)

by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 8:02 AM PST

Like this Reply to this comment

It's an example that the H1 laws work
by JoeF2 April 1, 2006 9:48 AM PST: There will always be some unscrupulous companies that violate laws. Best example: Enron...

That does not mean that the H1 is bad. On the contrary, the fact that such companies are exposed and fined shows that the H1 law has bite. It gets enforced.
So, again, thanks for making my point...; Like this

Prof Matloff on Continued Efforts to Exploit Indentured Servants

by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 8:07 AM PST

Prof Matloff on Continued Efforts to Exploit Indentured Servants
admin on Sunday, March 19 @ 21:10:28 EST
: " Norm Matloff writes in his 15 March newsletter:
I predicted that the guest worker bill program would really NOT be about illegal immigration, but instead would really be about importing cheap labor from around the world to fill all types of jobs, especially the white collar ones. Well, that is exactly what is in the Specter bill."

Last week I reported on a far-reaching immigration reform bill by Sen.
Arlen Specter, currently being marked up in the Senate. See

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/SpecterBill.txt

I noted that the bill did not have a number yet, and thus was on Congress' Web page, http://thomas.loc.gov There has been some information on the bill in the press and on the Web sites of some immigration reform organizations, but both are very short on details.
And as they say, "the devil is in the details."

Yet the Beltway insiders seem to have no problem getting copies of the bill. The immigration attorney and industry lobbies clearly have this access, as does at least one of the immigration reform organizations.
But the rest of us are on the outside looking in.

Fortunately, immigration attorney Greg Siskind obtained a copy and has published his analysis of it in the enclosed article. Some of its provisions are startling, aspects not mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle article or on the immigration reform organization Web pages.

This is a highly complex bill. What will get it the most press, of course, is its proposal of a very broad guest worker program, but it has other sections which would have huge implications for programmers and engineers who are U.S. citizens and permanent residents. To describe the effect the bill would have on American techies, let's put it this
way: The phrase, "final nail on the coffin" immediately comes to mind.

By the way, for those of you readers who are techies, if you ever thought that all these guest worker proposals are aimed at undocumented people working as farm workers and hotel maids, think again. More than a year ago, I predicted what would happen. See

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/MajorChangePoint.txt

I predicted that the guest worker bill program would really NOT be about illegal immigration, but instead would really be about importing cheap labor from around the world to fill all types of jobs, especially the white collar ones. Well, that is exactly what is in the Specter bill.

First of all, note that Specter's bill sets up TWO guest worker programs, one for illegals and the other general. See, I told ya so!
It really is much broader than for the illegals.

Second, Specter's general guest worker program, which he would name H-2C, would indeed cover many techie jobs. Here's what I said last
year:

* And even the programmer and engineer jobs would be vulnerable. Sure,
* the program structure could include a provision saying something like,
* "Not for jobs normally requiring a Bachelor's degree," but so what? The
* employers would suddenly decide that many programming and engineering
* jobs don't need a Bachelor's. If it weren't so sad, it would be comical
* to watch, say, Sun Microsystems, use this new program to hire
* sub-Bachelor's workers for the same jobs that Sun is now insisting
* require a Bachelor's degree (the requirement for H-1B).

Sure enough, it turns out that the only restriction Specter's H-2C has on job type is that the job not be covered by H-1B (and a couple of other ingredients in the nonimmigrant visa alphabet soup). Well, as I mentioned last year, the only requirement H-1B has is that the job requires a Bachelor's degree. So, another prediction come true.

And I didn't choose Sun Micro out of the blue. On the contrary, Sun has proudly discussed its community college program for hiring system administrators. In other words, people with only Associate of Arts degrees. And get this: Sun hires lots of H-1Bs as system administrators, implying that Sun considers it to be a job requiring a Bachelor's degree. In other words, they're having it both ways, and with H-2C they'd be in clover.

Now, let's discuss the bill's provisions regarding H-1B and employer-sponsored green cards. I'll introduce each one by quoting from Siskind's article, starting with this:

* The Spector bill makes important changes regarding student
* visas. First, F-1 optional practical training time is now extended
* from one year to 24 months. (Section 408). A new F-4 student visa
* is created for students pursuing advanced degrees in math,
* engineering, technology or the physical sciences. F-4 students would
* need to either return to their country of origin or remain in the US
* and pursue a job in their field and then pursue permanent residency.
* F-4s will be dual intent and the status can be extended while
* the applicant pursues permanent residency through a labor
* certification or other means. The alien must be working in his
* field as well to qualify to adjust status.

That OPT provision seems inoccuous but is very significant. Here's why:

For the last 5-10 years, it has been typical in the industry to have a policy in which it is very difficult for a new graduate to get a software development job without having had internship/co-op experience.
And if you don't get into a development position at the beginning, it is quite difficult to get one later. In other words, internship/co-op experience is crucial to being able to have a development career.

Moreover, often in internship/co-op positions a bond develops between the employer and student, making it much easier for the student to get a permanent job with the employer after graduation.

Again: Internship/co-op positions play a key role in getting good jobs in this field.

But internship/co-op experience is difficult to come by these days. Yet many of these jobs are taken by foreign students, who have the right to work via OPT.

The main thing which has served as a damper on that effect is that OPT has been limited to one year. Many foreign students have been reluctant to use any of that one-year time, because they want it to apply to their permanent job in the U.S. after graduation. If H-1B visas are in short supply when they graduate, employers can still hire them under OPT.

In other words, this doubling of OPT time is (a) specifically aimed at enhancing the ability of foreign students to work in the U.S. and thus reduce job opportunities for American students, and (b) would have the additional effect of literally making it impossible for many American students to ever enter the software development field.

And the following provision means that they don't have to use any of their OPT time for their internship/co-op work:

* Section 407 also would allow F-1 and F-4 students to accept
* off-campus jobs outside of the students field if the student is
* enrolled and in good standing at their educational institution, an
* employer provides...

So after graduation, the employer would not need to use up an H-1B visa on the foreign student for a full two years.

The "dual intent" provision would reverse a long-held tenet of the student visa concept. When a student in another country applies for a visa to attend a U.S. school, she is asked to confirm that she intends to return home after graduation. Of course, many have no such intention, and sadly, the U.S. system is forcing them to lie in their
very first contact with the U.S. Dual intent, which means they also
wish to become permanent residents of the U.S., at least would make them honest, but again the overall aim here is to enhance the ability of foreign students to get U.S. jobs.

Now here is a real shocker:

* Section 409 waives the labor certification recruitment requirement for
* those with advanced degrees in the sciences, technology, engineering
* or math from American universities.

As I've said before, the current labor certification process is riddled with loopholes. As I've pointed out countless times, immigration attorney Joel Stewart has said, "Employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply" ("Legal Rejection of U.S. Workers," Immigration Daily, April 24, 2000; available at www.ilw.com/articles/2000,0424-Stewart.shtm). Yet, to do away with the labor certification process entirely, as this provision of the Specter bill would do, is simply outrageous.

And it would create its own demand, of students abroad who would say, "Hey, it's that easy?"

Keep in mind, (a) we are overproducing people with MS/PhDs as it is, and
(b) the vast majority of the foreign graduate students are NOT "the best and the brightest." See

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/ProposedMSPhDExemption.txt

This next one is equally onerous, but not shocking, since I predicted it the other day:

* Section 409 exempts aliens who have earned advanced degrees in
* science, technology, engineering or math and have been working in
* their fields under a non-immigrant visa in the three years prior to
* filing for adjustment, recipients of national interest waivers,
* immediate relatives of aliens granted employment-based immigrant visas
* are exempt from green card quotas.

The key phrase here is "working...in the three years." Here is what I wrote the other day, before I knew the details. The San Francisco Chronicle article had simply said that "Other provisions include a new
F-4 visa category for students pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. These students would be granted permanent residence if they find a job in their field and pay a $1,000 fee toward scholarships and training of U.S. workers." I commented:

* How exactly would this provision of Specter's bill work? If the foreign
* student really can petition for a green card on his own, without
* employer sponsorship, that would remove a lot of the exploitability of
* the H-1Bs. That would be great if it were the case, but the article
* here says the student must get a job in the field. This implies some
* role for the employer in the green card process, and you can bet that
* the industry lobbyists will vigorously push Congress to make that role
* just as strong as it is now. If the bill passes, they'll then push BCIS
* (formerly INS) to write the regulations this way too. The result will
* be that the the H-1Bs with U.S. graduate degrees will be exploited just
* as much as before.

So, as you can see from Siskind's summary, there indeed is an employer tie. The foreign worker will have to have been "working in the field"
for three years. He must put in that time. What happens if the firm he is working for goes out of business? How long does he have to find another job? You can bet that he'll look for the most stable job, and stick with it even if he's being paid low wages. Remember, all the foreign worker has to do is find SOME job in his field SOMEWHERE. So he becomes the Web site operator for the local sidewalk peanut vendor, literally and figuratively working for peanuts, sticks with it for three years, and gets his green card. I am not exaggerating much when I talk about peanut vendors here.

* The H-1B cap is lifted for three years to 115,000. (Section 409).
* After that, the cap will remain at 115,000 but may rise up to 20% per
* year if the whole cap is used up in the prior year. If the cap is not
* reached, then the cap the next year will remain the same as the
* current year.

An obvious disaster for American programmers and engineers. I keep hearing from readers that every time the H-1B cap is exhausted they
start getting calls from recruiters.

* Title V Backlog Reduction

* Allows recapture of unused visa numbers and increases employment-based
* green cards from 140,000 to 290,000. Visas for spouses and children
* shall not be counted against the numerical limits.
...
* The per country limits are raised from 7% to 10%. (Section 502).

As I've said before, these would actually be good things, as they would reduce the window of exploitability for the H-1Bs, and thus make them less attractive to employers in the first place.

* Subtitle B Grant Programs to Assist Nonimmigrant Workers
*
* Provides funding for grants and to underwrite various education and
* training campaigns.

Can you believe this????

Norm

http://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0315-siskind.shtm

Immigration Daily: the news source for legal professionals

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act Of 2006

by Gregory Siskind

The Specter bill is a compromise bill that is designed to bridge the gap between the enforcement-only approach of the Houses Sensenbrenner bill and the broad legalization provisions found in the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill introduced last year. Most of the enforcement provisions from the Sensenbrenner bill remain, but the Senate bill provides for new guest worker programs designed to ensure employers can access needed workers and that the large undocumented population in the US can be put into legal status. The bill does not grant permanent residency to the undocumented, but it does make it possible for workers to get to the back of the line and pursue a green card legally.

The Specter bill is still being revised, but changes now being introduced are relatively modest compared. Important amendments may still be offered and the bill still may not pass in the Senate, but we decided to proceed with offering a detailed review of the 305 page piece of legislation.

If the Specter bill passes, the House will need to reach a compromise regarding how they will proceed. In December, the House passed the Sensenbrenner reform package. That bill mainly focuses on immigration enforcement, while the Specter bill covers enforcement as well as legal immigration (including the creation of a guest worker program that would be available to out of status immigrants). Whether the House will go along with accepting those changes is far from certain at this point.

The Specter bill has already drawn fire from pro and anti-immigration
groups. Certain harsh provisions from the Sensenbrenner bill
(including making it a felony to fall out of immigration status) made it into the Specter bill. And the Specter bill includes two new guest worker visa programs a general program and another for workers in the US without legal status.

While many, many more people will be able to legally work in the US and while green card quotas will rise significantly, it is still very likely that there will be long waits for green cards after the legislation passes. One can easily envision a system where it would take a decade or more for people to eventually achieve permanent residency status. Nevertheless, a long path to permanent residency will likely be seen by immigration advocates as preferable to no path at all. And the ability of illegal immigrants to be able to work, travel home freely and have family members with them in the US will probably convince many that this is a better alternative to the status quo.

We will be monitoring this legislation closely in the weeks and months to come. If I were a betting man, I would still put the odds at no better than 50-50 that the bill will pass. But the picture will become much more clear especially if Senator Frist is able to achieve his goal of getting the Specter bill to the Senate floor for a vote within the next month.

Below is a section-by-section summary of key provisions.

Title I Border Enforcement

Subtitle A Assets for Controlling United States Borders

This section of the bill authorizes a number of new border protection officers and inspectors for a multiyear period. Purchases of a number
of technological assets like new unmanned aerial planes are
authorized. (Section 102). New ports of entry are also authorized.
(Section 105).

Subtitle B Border Security Plans, Strategies and Reports

This section requires the Department of Homeland Security to prepare various reports on border security.

Subtitle C Other Border Security Initiatives

This section requires DHS to integrate biometric databases by October 1, 2007. (Section 121). It also mandates DHS submit a timeline for the extension of the US-VISIT exit-entry system to all ports of entry.
(Section 124)

All immigration-status documents, other than interim documents, issued by DHS must be machine-readable, tamper resistant and incorporate biometrics by October 26, 2007. (Section 126).

Section 127 of this bill would expand Section 222(g) of the
Immigration and Nationality Act concerning the cancellation of visas after an alien overstays an I-94. The new provision would void ALL visas in possession of the immigrant and not just the particular visa that was tied to the overstay. In other words, an overstay on a work
I-94 would trigger the cancellation of a visitor visa that may also be in the passport. The provision would, however, now allow a person to reapply for the visa in the country of last residence and not just in the country of nationality (as is currently required).

Permanent residents would now be required to provide biometrics upon entry and exit from the US just like non-immigrants. Failure to comply will be a new ground for inadmissibility. (Section 128)

Finally, this section requires DHS to prepare a report on imposing a barrier along both the southern border. (Section 129)

Title II. Interior Enforcement

Subtitle A General Enforcement

This subtitle bars aliens inadmissible on terrorism-related grounds
from receiving political asylum and also broadens the bar on
availability of cancellation of removal, withholding of removal and voluntary departure as well as eligibility for admission for those found to be security threats. This section shall apply retroactively to those currently in removal and exclusion proceedings. (Section 201).

The Supreme Court decision in Zadvydas v. Davis is addressed. That decision strictly limits the ability of DHS to detain an alien ordered removed when the government has not managed to remove the alien (usually because the US does not have good relations with the home country). DHS would now have discretion with few limits to detain someone beyond the removal period. DHS would have to certify every six months that the alien is likely to be removed in the reasonably foreseeable future, the alien poses a threat to the public (either for health or safety reasons). The Commissioner of Immigration and Customs Enforcement must personally sign off on the certification. This section also makes it more difficult to be released after an order of removal has been issued and while criminal proceedings are under way.
(Section 202).

This section makes various changes to laws surrounding aggravated felons. First, it broadens the definition of aggravated felony to include convictions even when the sentence that is the basis of being an aggravated felony is tied to recidivist or other enhancements.
(Section 203).

The definition of aggravated felony would be expanded in alien harboring and smuggling cases as well. Persons who knowingly hire at least ten individuals smuggled in to the US in a twelve month period would be guilty of an aggravated felony. Persons found guilty of buying or selling vehicles, vessels or aircraft used in alien smuggling would be guilty of an aggravated felony. (Section 203).

Marriage fraud and EB-5 fraud for which the term of imprisonment is at least a year would now be aggravated felonies. (Section 206).

Asylees convicted of aggravated felonies would no longer be eligible for waivers to adjust status to permanent residency. (Section 206).

Good moral character would not apply in cases where a person is convicted of a crime that is not defined as an aggravated felony at the time it occurs but is later classified as an aggravated felony unless the crime is more than ten years old and the applicant is granted a waiver by DHS.

Any alien who a consular officer or a DHS officer knows or has reason to believe is a member of a criminal street gang or has participated in a gangs activities is inadmissible. (Section 205)

Responsibility for the Temporary Protected Status program is
transferred from the Department of Justice to DHS. DHS will have the authority to terminate TPS status for any reason and DHS will be authorized to extend TPS status in increments of up to 18 months. Bars gang members from TPS status and clarifies that a TPS aliens immunity from detention only extends to detention based on immigration status and not other grounds. (Section 205).

Section 205(c) contains one of the more controversial sections of the Sensenbrenner bill. It would criminalize providing material assistance to illegal aliens and would seemingly make felons out of non-profit and religious organization workers who provide housing, travel, food and medical assistance to illegal aliens. The bill does insert a provision that says religious organizations shall not be guilty of alien smuggling if the minister or missionary has been a member of the denomination for at least a year.

The penalty for certain people found guilty of hiring unauthorized workers is increased shall be increased to 10 years.

The other most controversial section of the Sensenbrenner bill makes it in to this Senate bill as well. Section 206(a) would make it a felony to knowingly be in the US unlawfully whether by illegal entry or overstaying or violating the terms of a legal entry. The first violation is punishable by imprisonment of up to six months.

The summary of the legislation provided by Senator Specter speaks to Section 206 (c) which would increase penalties for marriage and EB-5 fraud. However, the actual text of the legislation does not contain a Section 206(c).

Section 207 makes it tougher to avoid criminal sanctions for illegally reentering the US after a deportation order. For example, the standard to attack an underlying removal order is increased. And it makes it a crime to aid or abet illegal reentry. However, this does not include providing humanitarian services such as providing food or medicine or transporting someone to a place where they could receive either.

The Specter bill has provisions creating a new crime for trafficking in passports. Furthermore, willfully making false statements in a passport application is a felony. The current standard requires showing a higher standard of intent. (Section 208)

The misuse of any immigration document would be criminalized in a manner similar to the Sensenbrenner bill. (Section 208 and 209)

Section 210 would allow states to hold illegal aliens for up to 14 days after completing criminal sentences in order to more easily transfer custody to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The section would also extend the use of the Institutional Removal Program (IRP) which identifies removable aliens in Federal and State prisons.

Section 211 would tighten voluntary departure rules including
shortening the affirmative voluntary departure period from 120 days to 60 days and the voluntary departure in removal proceedings from 60 to
45 days.

The statute of limitations for all immigration related crimes would be made a uniform ten years (Section 214).

The completion of any visa or status processing by DHS and the Justice Department will be barred while background and security clearances are pending. (Section 216).

TITLE III Increased Worksite Enforcement and Penalties

Section 301 of the Specter bill covers the unlawful employment of aliens. Employers would now be required to not only comply with I-9 rules, but also with a new Electronic Employment Verification System that is a permanent implementation of the basic pilot program that has been in existence for the last few years. Implementation of the electronic system will be rolled out over several years with the largest employers being required to participate first and then smaller employers later. DHS is also permitted to charge employers taxes tied to use of the system. This section also recognizes DOLs authority to investigate employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

For civil enforcement purposes, employers who hire ten unauthorized workers within a calendar year are presumed to have known that the workers were unauthorized. Knowingly hiring unauthorized workers
carries tougher penalties than unknowingly hiring unauthorized
workers. Employers who attempted in good faith to comply with the I-9 rules do have a defense, however, until electronic verification system participation is required.

DHS may require an employer to certify employment verification compliance based on an internal review as an alternative to a DOL audit. An employer will be granted a 60 day deadline that may be extended in the discretion of DHS.

Section 304 mandates that false claims to either citizenship or nationality are grounds for inadmissibility. Currently, just the former is. This has been a defense in removal cases because the I-9 form asks if someone is a citizen or national of the US while immigration law only penalizes claims of false citizenship.

Title IV Nonimmigrant and Immigrant Visa Reform

H-2C Visas

Section 401 creates a new H-2C visa. This visa appears targeted to workers either outside the US or currently in legal status in the US.
A separate guest worker program targeted at out of status workers is outlined in Title VI.

The visa is available to those coming to the US temporarily to perform temporary labor or services other than labor or services covered in H-1B, H-1C, H-2A, H-2B, H-3, or L, O, P, or R visas. The applicant must have a residence in a foreign country which the applicant has not intention of abandoning. The visa will become available one year after the date of enactment of the law and shall apply to aliens outside the US on the effective date. Rules must be released by DOL within six months of the enactment of the law.

Section 402 outlines the H-2C requirements. The employer must be capable of performing the services that are the subject of the petition. The worker must show that the he or she has received a job offer from a qualified employer. The worker must pay a $500 visa issuance fee in addition to the cost of adjudicating the petition (and this is in addition to consular reciprocal fees). Workers must have a medical examination at the workers expense. Workers must submit background information on health, criminal and security issues.

Changes of status to other visa categories are not permitted.

H-2Cs are available for an initial term of up to three years with a one time renewal for three more years. The alien is then required to depart the US for one year in order to qualify for additional H-2C time. Commuters into the US are not subject to the time limits.

H-2C status will be lost if a worker is unemployed for 45 or more consecutive days and the worker will be required to return to his or her home country. DHS may waive the return requirement.

Travel in and out of the US is permitted and return on an unexpired
I-94 is allowed even if the visa has expired. Time spent outside the US shall not extend the period of authorized admission in H-2C status.

H-2C holders who fail to depart within 10 days after the H-2C status terminates are barred from most immigration rights.

Anyone who enters or attempts to enter the US without inspection after enactment of the H-2C provisions will be barred for ten years receiving most immigration benefits.

The H-2C is portable and workers can move to new jobs as long as the new employer complies with the terms for H-2C employment.

Denials of H-2C status may not be appealed.

H-4 visas many be granted to spouses and children. H-2C visa holders must pay a $500 family supplemental application fee plus normal visa costs. Dependents must also get medical exams and have background checks. H-2C visa holders must demonstrate adequate finances to support family members coming on H-4s.

Section 403 spells out an employers obligations when hiring H-2C workers. Employers must attest that

- Hiring the H-2C will not adversely wages and working
conditions for US workers.

- The employer did not and will not cause US workers to lose
their jobs by hiring the H-2C worker. There is a 90 day look back and look forward provision.

- The worker will be paid the higher of either the actual or
prevailing wage. Private wage data may be used.

- There is no strike or other form of work stoppage.

- The employer is covered by a state workers compensation
program, the employer will provide at no cost to the worker insurance covering injury or illnesses arising due to the job. The insurance would need to be comparable to state workers compensation programs.

- Notice to workers is provided

- Unless DOL has precertified a shortage, the employer can
show there are not sufficient workers able, willing and qualified and immediately available to perform the job. Good faith recruiting efforts must be undertaken in the three month period prior to filing (with recruiting ending at least 14 days prior to filing). The job must be advertised at the actual wage paid by the employer.

- The job must be bona fide.

- Employers must maintain public access files.

- The employer must notify DOL and DHS when an H-2C leaves
the employer within three business days after the departure.

- The petition must be filed not more than 60 days before the
date the services are needed.

DHS shall have the authority to audit employers to ensure compliance.
Employers are required to retain records for five years from the date the petition is filed. (Section 403) They are also required to maintain records for at least one year that describe why US workers were not hired (Section 406).

Employers who misrepresent facts or fail to comply with the terms of the program can be barred for up to three years from sponsoring or employing H-2C workers. And punishing whistleblowing employees or former employees is prohibited.

Foreign labor contractors recruiting H-2C workers are required to disclose a variety of details to H-2C workers at the time of their recruitment including information on the proposed place of employment, the pay, the type of work, who is paying travel expenses, whether there is a strike or other similar labor dispute, whether the contractor is getting a commission based on the workers services, details regarding insurance and workers compensation coverage, and information on the risk of work related injuries. Foreign labor contractors are prohibited from charging the H-2C worker for their services.

Foreign labor contractors will be required to register with the Department of Labor and employers may only use the services of
registered contractors. DOL will issue two year renewable
certifications of these contractors. H-2C workers will also have the ability to lodge complaints against contractors with the DOL. The DOL will have the discretion to require contractors be bonded and may also deny certification if it determines the contractor lacks sufficient ties to the US to adequately enforce these rules.

Employers are subject to civil fines of $2000 up to $35,000 per worker depending on whether the violation is willful and whether a worker was harmed. Imprisonment of up to six months and additional fines of up to $35,000 are possible if a willful violation occurs and an individual suffers extreme physical or financial harm.

Under Section 404, DHS is required to set up an alien employment
management system to manage and track the employment of H-2C
immigrants. Employers shall be able to recruit and advertise
employment opportunities through the system.

The Department of Labor must set up an electronic job registry that provides information on job opportunities for US workers in order to ensure US workers are not being passed over in favor of foreign
workers. And DOL must set up a publicly accessible web page that
provide a single Internet link to each State workforce agencys electronic registry of jobs available throughout the US. (Section 406)

The US shall negotiate bilateral treaties with countries sending H-2C workers requiring the countries to accept the return of nationals ordered removed from the US within three days of such removal.
(Section 410)

Foreign Students

The Spector bill makes important changes regarding student visas.
First, F-1 optional practical training time is now extended from one year to 24 months. (Section 408). A new F-4 student visa is created
for students pursuing advanced degrees in math, engineering,
technology or the physical sciences. F-4 students would need to either return to their country of origin or remain in the US and pursue a job in their field and then pursue permanent residency. F-4s will be dual intent and the status can be extended while the applicant pursues permanent residency through a labor certification or other means. The alien must be working in his field as well to qualify to adjust status. Applicants for adjustment under this new section would pay a fee of $1000 which will fund scholarships and fraud prevention.

Section 407 also would allow F-1 and F-4 students to accept off-campus jobs outside of the students field if the student is enrolled and in good standing at their educational institution, an employer provides the school and the Labor Department with an attestation that it has spent 21 days unsuccessfully recruiting for the job and is paying the higher of the actual or prevailing wage, and the student will work no more than 20 hours during the academic term or 40 hours per week on vacations.

Section 409 exempts aliens who have earned advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math and have been working in their fields under a non-immigrant visa in the three years prior to filing for adjustment, recipients of national interest waivers, immediate relatives of aliens granted employment-based immigrant visas are exempt from green card quotas.

Section 409 waives the labor certification recruitment requirement for those with advanced degrees in the sciences, technology, engineering or math from American universities.

The H-1B cap is lifted for three years to 115,000. (Section 409).
After that, the cap will remain at 115,000 but may rise up to 20% per year if the whole cap is used up in the prior year. If the cap is not reached, then the cap the next year will remain the same as the current year.

Title V Backlog Reduction

Allows recapture of unused visa numbers and increases employment-based green cards from 140,000 to 290,000. Visas for spouses and children shall not be counted against the numerical limits. Immediate relatives would no longer be counted against the 480,000 annual cap on family-based immigration. (Section 501).

The per country limits are raised from 7% to 10%. (Section 502).

The allocation of family-sponsored visas is shifted as follows (Section 503):
* 10% - F1 unmarried sons and daughters of citizens
* 50% - F-2 spouses, minor children and unmarried adult sons and
daughters of permanent residents (77% of these go to spouses and
minor children of permanent residents)
* 10% - married sons and daughters of US citizens
* 30% - brothers and sisters of citizens

The allocation of 290,000 employment-based visas is shifted as follows (Section 503):
* 15% for EB-1 (was 28.6% but presumably many will now qualify in
the new uncapped category for certain advanced degree holders)
* 15% for EB-2
* 35% for EB-3
* 5% for investors (redesignated as EB-4)
* 30% for new EB-5 for other workers (old EB-3 unskilled workers).

The immediate relative category is changed to let children of spouses and parents of US citizens to obtain legal status and travel to the US to be with their families.

Title VI Conditional Nonimmigrant Workers

Subtitle A Conditional Non-Immigrant Work Authorization and Status

In addition to the H-2C visa program described in Title IV, the Specter bill creates an alternative guest worker program called conditional non-immigrant status.

Anyone present in the US before January 4, 2004 and employed in the US
since then will be eligible for conditional nonimmigrant work
authorization and status. Applicants must submit to medical
examinations and pay all back income taxes. Applicants must be submitted within a year of passage of this law. Employers are required to pay a $500 fee. (Section 601)

DHS is required to begin accepting applications within three months after the date of enactment. DHS shall process all cases within 18 months.

Despite prior status violations, recipients of these visas will have the ability to travel.

Spouses and minor children can accompany a conditional nonimmigrant if they submit a fee of $100 per family member. They may not work on the basis of being a dependent.

Failure to be employed for a 45 days stretch will render a person subject to the loss of their work status.

The conditional nonimmigrant visa is portable and employees can switch employers if they are complying with the terms of the conditional status.

An alien who fails to apply for this program will be ineligible for any relief unless the alien could not obtain such status due to reasons of age, mental impairment or physical disability.

While applications are pending, applicants will be considered to be in legal status and entitled to interim work authorization. Employers are also granted safe harbor status if they cooperate with an applicant seeking conditional non-immigrant status.

Subtitle B Grant Programs to Assist Nonimmigrant Workers

Provides funding for grants and to underwrite various education and training campaigns.

Title VII Immigration Litigation Reduction

Subtitle A Appeals and Review

This provision would now require all immigration cases to be handled by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and that court will be increased in size by three judges to 15. This provision only applies to decisions entered on or after the date of enactment of the new law. (Section 701)

The Board of Immigration Appeals is granted the authority to issue an order of removal without remanding the case to an immigration judge.
(Section 703).

Decisions to revoke a visa and a removal order predicated on this is no longer reviewable except as it relates to questions of statutory interpretation or alleged constitutional problems. (Section 704).

Attorneys fees under EAJA are not to be paid in immigration cases for aliens who are removable, except when the DOJ or DHS determination regarding removability was not substantially justified. (Section 709)

Subtitle B Immigration Review Reform

The President will now choose the Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. (Section 711). The Director shall choose appoint a Chief Immigration Judge. (Section 713). The Director, in consultation with the Chief Immigration Judge, shall appoint immigration judges.
Judges will be granted seven year appointments and can serve for up to
14 years. (Section 713).
_________________________________________________________________

About The Author

Gregory Siskind is a partner in Siskind Susser's Memphis, Tennessee, office. After graduating magna *** laude from Vanderbilt University, he received his Juris Doctorate from the University of Chicago. Mr.
Siskind is a member of AILA, a board member of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and a member of the ABA, where he serves on the LPM Publishing Board as Marketing Vice Chairman. He is the author of several books, including the J Visa Guidebook and The Lawyer's Guide to Marketing on the Internet. Mr. Siskind practices all areas of immigration law, specializing in immigration matters of the health care and technology industries. He can be reached by email at gsiskind@visalaw.com.
"

(American workers, join us in fighting the H-1b increasae! Plseae use the following URL to send a protest letter to Congress. We stopped the H-1b increase last year and with your help and we can stop it again this year.

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/H1B )

Like this Reply to this comment

Matloff is clueless and a known anti-immigrant
by JoeF2 April 1, 2006 9:45 AM PST: You are using yet another "study" from a known anti-immigrant who doesn't have any knowledge about immigration nor about the economic effects of immigration.
Dr. Matloff is a computer science professor, and, from what my contacts at UC Davis tell me, not an overly good one...

It is always telling that you anti-immigrants try to use his job title as professor as a way to gain credibility. Professor is a job title, it doesn't imply authority. And Dr. Matloff doesn't have any knowledge nor authority to talk about immigration.; Like this

Coding for $15 an hour?
by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 8:11 AM PST: Coding for $15 an hour?

: " Coding for $15 an hour?
June 30, 2005 3:26 PM PDT

http://news.com.com/2061-10788_3-5770608.html

Could a computer coding job paying just $15 per hour signal something's wrong with the tech world?

That relatively measly amount is what's promised in an ad for a "ASP.NET Programmer" on the America's Job Bank site. The job, which calls for "at least 1 year's experience either in school, at work, or a combination of the two," is being offered by employment services company AppleOne, according to the ad.

$15 per hour for a computer programmer makes the position fall below the 10th percentile for the programming occupation both nationally and in California, where the job is said to be located. It's less than what some security guards make.

And it has Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild advocacy group, steamed about the way domestic techies have to compete with a greater number of foreign workers. A $15-per-hour coding gig doesn't jibe with the recent expansion of the H-1B guest worker visa program, Berry argued in an email Thursday.

"(Department of Labor) and Congress--under the law of supply and demand, aren't wages supposed to go up when there is a shortage?" Berry wrote. "And if there is not a shortage, why did you recently increase the H-1B quota by another 20,000 foreign workers per year?"

To be fair, one defense of H-1B visas is not linked directly to a shortage of workers. Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, has argued that the visas give U.S. companies important access to international talent as they compete globally.

Even so, the ad's wage does make one wonder if guest worker visas and the rise of offshoring are undermining U.S. tech careers--and by extension threatening the country's tech leadership.

Posted by Ed Frauenheim "; Like this Reply to this comment

Coding for $15 an hour?
by stopoffshoring April 1, 2006 8:11 AM PST: Coding for $15 an hour?

: " Coding for $15 an hour?
June 30, 2005 3:26 PM PDT

http://news.com.com/2061-10788_3-5770608.html

Could a computer coding job paying just $15 per hour signal something's wrong with the tech world?

That relatively measly amount is what's promised in an ad for a "ASP.NET Programmer" on the America's Job Bank site. The job, which calls for "at least 1 year's experience either in school, at work, or a combination of the two," is being offered by employment services company AppleOne, according to the ad.

$15 per hour for a computer programmer makes the position fall below the 10th percentile for the programming occupation both nationally and in California, where the job is said to be located. It's less than what some security guards make.

And it has Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild advocacy group, steamed about the way domestic techies have to compete with a greater number of foreign workers. A $15-per-hour coding gig doesn't jibe with the recent expansion of the H-1B guest worker visa program, Berry argued in an email Thursday.

"(Department of Labor) and Congress--under the law of supply and demand, aren't wages supposed to go up when there is a shortage?" Berry wrote. "And if there is not a shortage, why did you recently increase the H-1B quota by another 20,000 foreign workers per year?"

To be fair, one defense of H-1B visas is not linked directly to a shortage of workers. Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, has argued that the visas give U.S. companies important access to international talent as they compete globally.

Even so, the ad's wage does make one wonder if guest worker visas and the rise of offshoring are undermining U.S. tech careers--and by extension threatening the country's tech leadership.

Posted by Ed Frauenheim "; Like this Reply to this comment

Okay, let H1-b in -- at a 150% price premium
by bwithnell April 1, 2006 5:57 PM PST: Companies state that they cannot find the talent they need with American workers; they say the talent just isn't there. Okay, so let them hire foreign workers, but only at a premium that encourages them to hire American. Perhaps a regulated rate that is 150% of the going rate for American workers. I don't think industry would want any such H1-b visa holders. They would find Americans much more qualified overnight.; Like this Reply to this comment

Open Borders

by mjd420nova April 2, 2006 9:29 PM PDT

How long must we suffer these never ending arguments over illegal immigration and worker
visas. We must first begin ENFORCEMENT of the
present laws before we change something that hasn't and won't work the way the government
applies them. Build a wall, a fence, patrol the borders as we should have been all along.
Maybe a wise application of unmanned aircraft
could bridge the gaps and make true enforcement possible.

Like this Reply to this comment

Prison walls
by JFDMit April 2, 2006 11:35 PM PDT: The problem when you build walls around your country is deciding if they're there to keep others out or you in.

So go ahead and seal America off from the rest of the World. Building walls worked great for the old Soviet Bloc, didn't it?; Like this

H-1B Visa

by tangso April 3, 2006 5:34 AM PDT

US Jobs are going OffShore, Foreign IT firms are bringing their employees here in L1 visa, now they want to increase H-1B visa? What is left for the American work force? We should reduce, if not abolish H-1B and L1. Give the US work force a chance.

Like this Reply to this comment

How about actually learning things?
by JoeF2 April 3, 2006 7:54 AM PDT: If US workers were qualified enough, they would find jobs easily. Companies would be happy to avoid the hassle, paperwork and fees that the H1 requires.; Like this

H-1B Visa

by tangso April 3, 2006 5:34 AM PDT

Like this Reply to this comment

How about actually learning things?
by JoeF2 April 3, 2006 7:54 AM PDT: If US workers were qualified enough, they would find jobs easily. Companies would be happy to avoid the hassle, paperwork and fees that the H1 requires.; Like this

H-1Bs are simply for cost-cutting
by ChrisTexan April 3, 2006 8:42 AM PDT: There is no shortage of skilled workers in the USA for nearly any high-tech position, it's a matter of copmanies not wanting to pay market-rate wages to them that is the issue here. Solution:
Any company wanting to hire an H-1B worker must
#1 - Employ at least 50% of their staff in that same position using U.S. citizens.
#2 - H-1B visa employees must receive a payroll wage within 10% of the pay range of the US employees in that position.
#3 - Employment costs for US citizens (payroll taxes, Social security, etc) that do not apply to H-1B visas must be paid into a guaranteed fund divided among the US employees, in the form of either offsetting healthcare premiums, 401K/pension plan contributions, etc.
#4 - Companies should have to prove that they offered "position X" at a pay rate within 10% of the current (or previous employee) pay ranges for that position, to all qualified applicants before accepting an H-1B.

Meeting these requirements would guarantee that a company would be fairly evaluating US employees to fill positions first (given higher training, retention, and turnover costs for H-1B workers), but would not penalize them for filling positions that need filling if H-1B are the only way to do it.
This simple plan would also remove the stigma attached to the program by domestic workers, John would know that Raheed was hired because he or she was qualified, needed, and able, not because it was a cost-cutting move, and so would be more likely to support and work alongside of him in a more productive fashion.
Besides blood-sucking unproductive cost-cutting by big business (ultimately reducing their competitiveness however as their permanent talent levels and cohesiveness fall apart), there are no real negatives to this plan until there are no domestically qualified applicants left for a position (at which point, the H-1B cap can be raised appropriately to maintain equilibrium with all US workers employed that desire to be). There should be ***0%**** unemployment at equivalent pay levels in any field that allows H-1B visas, before the visas are issued.
This also has the benefit of showing students that going into these fields can and will be productive in their futures, as it is right now, these fields are shrinking in our education market, because people see that they can't get a return on the investment they need to become qualified, as the jobs won't be there, or the pay rates will be so depressed as to be unable to even pay off the student loans needed to be educated.; Like this Reply to this comment

H-1Bs are simply for cost-cutting
by ChrisTexan April 3, 2006 8:42 AM PDT: There is no shortage of skilled workers in the USA for nearly any high-tech position, it's a matter of copmanies not wanting to pay market-rate wages to them that is the issue here. Solution:
Any company wanting to hire an H-1B worker must
#1 - Employ at least 50% of their staff in that same position using U.S. citizens.
#2 - H-1B visa employees must receive a payroll wage within 10% of the pay range of the US employees in that position.
#3 - Employment costs for US citizens (payroll taxes, Social security, etc) that do not apply to H-1B visas must be paid into a guaranteed fund divided among the US employees, in the form of either offsetting healthcare premiums, 401K/pension plan contributions, etc.
#4 - Companies should have to prove that they offered "position X" at a pay rate within 10% of the current (or previous employee) pay ranges for that position, to all qualified applicants before accepting an H-1B.

Meeting these requirements would guarantee that a company would be fairly evaluating US employees to fill positions first (given higher training, retention, and turnover costs for H-1B workers), but would not penalize them for filling positions that need filling if H-1B are the only way to do it.
This simple plan would also remove the stigma attached to the program by domestic workers, John would know that Raheed was hired because he or she was qualified, needed, and able, not because it was a cost-cutting move, and so would be more likely to support and work alongside of him in a more productive fashion.
Besides blood-sucking unproductive cost-cutting by big business (ultimately reducing their competitiveness however as their permanent talent levels and cohesiveness fall apart), there are no real negatives to this plan until there are no domestically qualified applicants left for a position (at which point, the H-1B cap can be raised appropriately to maintain equilibrium with all US workers employed that desire to be). There should be ***0%**** unemployment at equivalent pay levels in any field that allows H-1B visas, before the visas are issued.
This also has the benefit of showing students that going into these fields can and will be productive in their futures, as it is right now, these fields are shrinking in our education market, because people see that they can't get a return on the investment they need to become qualified, as the jobs won't be there, or the pay rates will be so depressed as to be unable to even pay off the student loans needed to be educated.; Like this Reply to this comment

H-1Bs pay Soc Security but don't get any benefits
by April 3, 2006 10:37 AM PDT: H-1Bs pay Soc Security Taxes but are not eligible to obtain any benefits. That's how the US Govt is filling up the shortfall in the Soc Security kitty.; Like this Reply to this comment

H-1Bs pay Soc Security but don't get any benefits
by April 3, 2006 10:37 AM PDT: H-1Bs pay Soc Security Taxes but are not eligible to obtain any benefits. That's how the US Govt is filling up the shortfall in the Soc Security kitty.; Like this Reply to this comment

Use your vote this November .....

by Robert Wiseman April 3, 2006 4:04 PM PDT

Use your vote this November --- Vote to throw out any Congressman working to increase the H1B Visa.

Send money to candidates that support American Engineers and Scientists.

Like this Reply to this comment

I will
by JoeF2 April 3, 2006 4:14 PM PDT: I will vote for Congresspeople who make the US more competitive. That means I will vote for people who make it easier for engineers and scientists to come to the US, i.e., for people who support an increase of the H1.
In the long run, that is what helps everybody, including American engineers and scientists.; Like this

Re: Use your Vote
by IdentifyFraud April 3, 2006 6:51 PM PDT: Totally agree.; Like this

Outsource or H-1B, your choice

by joelam888 May 2, 2008 5:54 PM PDT

That's the reality, face it!

Like this Reply to this comment

The H-1b program makes it easier to outsource jobs to India
by Jake Leone April 1, 2006 7:47 AM PST: It's a lot easier to outsource jobs to India if you already have a workforce that was born there.

I've seen (witnessed first-hand) the eagerness of Indian Nationals to return to their home country for the companies they work for here in the U.S.

H-1b is basically a huge, on-the-job training program for the outsourcing market and FUTURE outsourcing activities of companies.

Outsourcing and H-1b go hand-in-hand.

Further, all we are doing when we outsource, import, and BORROW (9-trillion last count), is devalue the U.S. Dollar.

One default by U.S. government is all it will take, and we'll all be living like 3rd worlder's, because we've outsourced everything.

Dude, why can't Republicans see their own folly?; Like this

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