H-1B: Suit says Indian outsourcing firm discriminates against non-Indian workers, gam

H-1B: Suit says Indian outsourcing firm discriminates against non-Indian workers, games U.S. visa system

MERCURY NEWS FILE PHOTO BY MERI SIMON 7/18/2000

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MERCURY NEWS PHOTO BY MERI SIMON 7/18/2000 Asif Siddique goes through a pile of papers containing his visa and other immigration documents. He has been working in the U.S. on an H-1B visa but his visa expired before he was approved for a green card. He can no longer work in the U. S. but he stays here while he waits hoping to get his green card. Siddique has been in the US since 1987. He went to school at Ohio State University. He is origionally from Pakistan.

By ETHAN BARON | ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: August 16, 2018 at 1:19 pm | UPDATED: August 17, 2018 at 6:51 am

Outsourcing companies that obtain U.S. work visas to place foreign workers in U.S. companies have become a target for critics of the H-1B visa program, and a new lawsuit will likely add fuel to the fire.

Indian outsourcing company HCL discriminates against non-Indian citizens in hiring and promotions, fires them at a higher rate than Indian workers, and games America’s visa system by gobbling up more H-1B visas than it can use, a new lawsuit by a former employee claims.

HCL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lottery-based H-1B visa, intended for highly skilled jobs, has attracted the wrath of critics who point to reported abuses — by outsourcing firms, Disney and UC San Francisco, for example — and claim it is used to replace American workers with foreign nationals. Silicon Valley’s tech industry relies heavily on the H-1B, and has lobbied for an increase to the annual 85,000 cap on new visas.

Reese Voll, a white, male computer-systems architect who said in his lawsuit that he worked at HCL for about two years until he was terminated in August 2016, alleges the company “prefers South Asians in employment decisions” and has implemented a number of corporate practices to put its bias into action. The suit said HCL’s South Asian workforce is “primarily Indian.”

Voll is seeking class-action status for the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose.

Among the corporate practices adopted by HCL is filling its U.S. workforce with Indian citizens working under the H-1B visa, the suit claims.

“HCL submits visa petitions for more positions than actually exist in the U.S. in order to maximize its chances of securing the highest number of available H-1B visas from the lottery process,” the suit alleges. “In this way, HCL has been able to secure visas for far more individuals than it actually has a present need for.”

All, or virtually all, of the H-1B visas HCL obtains are for South Asians, the suit said.

Foreign citizens with H-1Bs are given preference over workers already in the U.S., the suit claims.

“Non-South Asian individuals are often displaced from their current positions in favor of South Asian and visa-ready individuals,” the suit alleges. “Jobs are given to visa-holding South Asians from India.”

The suit was filed in federal court, as it claims HCL’s employment practices violate U.S. civil rights law.

Indian workers have dominated the H-1B system, with 2.2 million H-1B applications submitted for Indian workers from 2007 to 2017, according to U.S. government data. China, the country with the next-largest number of applicants, had about 300,000 visa requests. Pew Research reported last year that more than half of all H-1B visas were awarded to Indian citizens from 2001 to 2015.

Outsourcing firms have traditionally taken the largest numbers of H-1B visas. The H-1B is obtained by companies, and in 2016, three of the top five recipient firms were Indian outsourcers, Pew reported last year. HCL was eighth on the list of top H-1B recipients in 2016, receiving 3,492 visas, according to Pew. The leading recipient was New Jersey-based Cognizant, with 21,459 H-1B approvals in 2016, Pew reported.

HCL’s preference for Indian workers means it promotes them at higher rates than non-South Asians, and it terminates non-South Asians at higher rates, the suit alleges. Voll claims that in the two years he worked for HCL, in Texas, he witnessed the company’s preference for Indian workers first-hand.

Voll also claims he wasn’t able to collaborate properly with co-workers.

“South Asian colleagues routinely spoke in Hindi and other non-English languages both socially and while discussing client-related work, precluding (Voll) from fully participating in these conversations,” the lawsuit claims.

Voll said in the lawsuit that he was terminated after HCL removed him from his computer-systems architect position, and that his subsequent applications for positions in the company were unsuccessful. Voll wants the court’s approval to bring in as co-plaintiffs “all individuals who are not of South Asian race who applied for positions with (or within) HCL in the U.S. and were not hired, who were employed by HCL in the U.S. and sought a promotion but were not promoted, and/or who were employed by HCL in the U.S. and were involuntarily terminated.”

He is seeking unspecified damages and compensation, plus a court order forcing HCL to adopt a “non-discriminatory method for hiring, promotion, termination, and other employment decisions.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/...ystem-lawsuit/

Top prospective employers of foreign workers with H-1B visas

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http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...h1b_employers/

Taking OUR high paying jobs and do not pay taxes!

They need to pay a 15% PRIVILEGE TAX with 15% EMPLOYER MATCHING!

Put every dime into our Social Security and Medicare Funds and they get none of it!

H-1B: U.S. officials cracking down on Indian citizens, report says

By ETHAN BARON | ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: August 15, 2018 at 6:30 am | UPDATED: August 17, 2018 at 6:51 am


A crackdown on the controversial H-1B visa intended for skilled workers has struck Indian citizens harder than other foreign nationals, with federal officials hitting them with more visa denials and demands for proof of their eligibility to work.

That’s according to a report that found U.S. gatekeepers ramping up their rate of visa refusals at the end of last year and slapping applicants from India with more “requests for evidence” of eligibility than applicants from other nations. The increased denials and scrutiny were “likely due to new Trump administration policies,” said the group that produced the report, the National Foundation for American Policy.

India has long dominated applications for the H-1B, which is obtained by employers seeking to hire foreign workers. From 2007 to 2017, 2.2 million H-1B applications were submitted for Indian workers. Chinese workers were the next-largest group of H-1B applicants, with about 300,000 visa requests. In Silicon Valley, about 71 percent of tech employees are foreign-born, according to a 2016 report based on U.S. census data. However, that data did not break down how many were foreign-born U.S. citizens versus visa holders.

But as the U.S. government moved forward with President Donald Trump’s “Buy American and Hire American” executive order, the rejection rate for Indian workers’ H-1B applications jumped to 24 percent in the fourth quarter of last year from 17 percent in the third quarter — a 42 percent increase, according to the foundation. The foundation, a non-profit think tank, has pushed for an increase to the number of new H-1B visas granted per year, which is currently capped at 85,000.

Indian nationals’ rejection rates for the first and second quarters of 2017 were 18 percent and 17 percent respectively, highlighting the fourth-quarter spike.

Applicants from other countries were also rejected more frequently, but the percentage increase in denials was slightly smaller, rising from 14 percent in the third quarter of 2017 to 20 percent in the fourth quarter — a 40 percent increase.

“Cases that used to be approved without a second thought are now receiving requests for evidence and are being denied,” said Cornell University immigration law professor and immigration lawyer Stephen W. Yale-Loehr.

Immigration Reform Law Institute lawyer John Miano applauded the increases in requests for evidence and H-1B rejections. “For the first time, we’re seeing actual scrutiny applied to H-1B petitions,” Miano said. “The people in (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration) who have seen the fraud and abuse going on for decades now are able to do their jobs without fear of repercussions from above.”

The H-1B, heavily relied upon by Bay Area technology companies, including Google and Facebook, has become a flashpoint in the U.S. immigration debate, with the tech industry lobbying for expansion of the visa program, and critics pointing to reported abuses and arguing that H-1B visa holders take jobs from Americans. H-1B recipients are supposed to have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and do specialized work.

The Trump administration’s H-1B crackdown, intended to help American workers, could do the opposite if U.S. firms can’t get the foreign talent they need, Yale-Loehr said. “They may not be able to continue to grow their companies the way they would like,” he said. “It may make larger companies more likely to set up overseas operations rather than expand in the United States, and that ultimately hurts U.S. workers.”

But Miano sees the H-1B program as un-salvageable. “The question is, should we have a program that’s designed to replace Americans with cheap foreign workers?”

On top of upping the rate of H-1B denials for Indian citizens, officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services appeared to be laying an especially heavy hand on workers from India during the application process. In the fourth quarter of 2017, 72 percent of H-1B applications for Indian citizens were met with requests for additional evidence to prove the applicant and the job were eligible for the visa, compared to 61 percent for nationals of other countries, the foundation reported.

However, the data — which the foundation said were based on federal government figures and its own calculations — showed a dramatic upswing in demands for evidence from citizens of all nations. In the first quarter of 2017, the rate of “requests for evidence” for Indian citizens’ applications was 18 percent, and for all other countries, 14 percent. Those numbers dropped slightly in the second quarter, crept up in the third — to 24 percent for Indians and 18 percent for citizens of other countries — before skyrocketing in the fourth quarter.


Whether Indian citizens are being singled out by the U.S. government is unclear, Yale-Loehr said. “It could just be just because Indians are over-represented among computer professionals, therefore they’re over-represented in these requests for evidence and denials.”UC Davis computer science professor Norman Matloff, who studies the H-1B, believes more denials and evidence requests hit Indian citizens’ applications because visas for Indian nationals are often obtained by the outsourcing companies that have been the subject of H-1B-abuse reports and have become a target of the Trump administration.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/...s-report-says/

We have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of American IT graduates who can't find a job because the market is saturated with IT workers. These IT workers from India are NOT needed. This is outrageous. This H-1B crap (scam so employers in the IT field can get cheap labor) needs to be eliminated ASAP!

At one time a few years ago there were over 2 million unemployed IT workers in the United States. Probably hasn't changed that much, hope lots of these workers can find good jobs now that Trump is fixing the economy and clamping down on immigration competition.

There have been mentions of removing the wage restrictions for H1-B workers. This would make them compete on merit as opposed to cost.

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Originally Posted by Newmexican

There have been mentions of removing the wage restrictions for H1-B workers. This would make them compete on merit as opposed to cost.

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First, all H1-B visas need to be immediately stopped until ALL of the unemployed American IT workers get a job. And ONLY then should just enough be issued to fill the positions needed, along with the wage restrictions, so these foreign workers don't have an advantage over American workers. And that should only be temporary until Americans can fill those positions.

All foreign workers need to pay a 15% PRIVILEGE TAX with 15% EMPLOYER MATCHING

Every dime goes into our Social Security and Medicare Funds and they get none of it.

Do not bring them here!

They need to get on birth control, go home and create jobs in their own country!