05/06/2008
Rick Merritt writes at EE Times:The U.S. government fined a consulting firm $45,000 for placing online job ads for computer programmers that said only H-1B visa holders should apply. The case is just the tip of an iceberg of H-1B abuses, according to a lobbying group that filed the original complaint.First off, this is the tip of the iceberg. The H-1b program in fraudulent by its very nature. These folks just did it more blatantly than most. The value of each H-1b visa to the recipient is about $50K. The theoretic value of US citizenship is more like $300K — probably more like $225K in today’s conditions and with today’s expectations. In that kind of situation, with a low chance of getting caught, companies can pretty blatently risk $45K fines like this.The Department of Justice said iGate Mastech Inc. (Pittsburgh) placed 30 online job ads in May and June 2006 asking for only H-1B visa holders. The case is one of 215 the DoJ has handled involving preference for H-1B workers over U.S. citizens since the year 2000.
One of the iGate ads was for a Java programmer in the Midwest. It stated "Only H-1s Apply, and should be willing to transfer H-1B."
According to government figures from 2007 iGate Mastech employed 14 H1-B visa holders in 2007. It was one of nearly 30,000 companies employing a total of 126,219 H1-Bs last year.
The real cost of the H-1b program goes beyond just the mining the citizenship rights of US technical workers. Some H-1b worker have access to extremely sensitive information-and can facilitate the export of entire US industries. Other H-1b workers can be used to facilitate huge financial frauds — as appears likely to be the case with Enron (I just don’t think it is a coincidence that Enron heavily hired Indian programmers and the company made idiotic investments in India that cost shareholders $2 billion). I fully expect that every major intelligence agency in the world has some H-1b workers planted in key positions in the US. It would be nice if some of the folks in the FBI and congress wake up and actually do their jobs.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.