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Firm agrees to pay $2.25 million in back wages to workers from India

November 22, 2005

By Jewel Gopwani

Free Press Business Writer
Bingham Farms-based Computech Inc will pay $2.25 million in back wages for failing to adequately pay 232 employees, according to a settlement between the computer staffing firm and the U.S. Department of Labor.

In one of the Midwests largest immigration law settlements, Computech must also pay $400,000 in fines to the labor department for failing to pay workers for full 40-hour weeks, even when they were not on the job, a requirement for companies who bring immigrants to work in the United States.

The employees were brought into the country, mainly from India, legally on temporary H-1B visas. Such visas give immigrants who hold bachelor's degrees permission to work in the United States in so-called professional occupations, such as technology or health care.
According to labor 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 have no financial incentive to hire immigrants instead of U.S. workers.