Companies Do Not Need to Make Any Attempt to Find US Citizens Before Hiring H1-Bs
Executive Summary
- There is a claim repeated throughout media and by the H1-B lobby that companies must prove they can’t find a US worker before hiring H1-Bs.
- This claim is false.
Introduction
The H1-B lobby and H1-B hiring companies have demonstrated that they will tell any lie necessary to keep the H1-B program open and to continually expand the H1-B spigot. After analyzing this program thoroughly, we commonly refer to it as the “US Citizen Worker Displacement Program.” Corporations, immigration attorneys and many others use the program specifically to displace US workers.
However, to continue doing so, they need to disseminate false information about the program so that political will does not rise in the US population to restrict it.
The Reason the H1-B Lobby Distributed This False Claim
One of their often-repeated fictions is that it is necessary for companies first to try to find a US citizen, BEFORE, filing for H1-B visas. This is entirely false in that there are first no stipulations in the H1-B law that requires this. Instead, this is a false talking point designed to get US citizens to not react negatively to the H1-B program. And the media usually passively repeats what they are told by those that support H1-B.
See the following example.
Since 1990, the H-1B visa program has let companies temporarily employ foreign workers in occupations requiring specialized skills and a bachelor’s degree — when they struggle to find a U.S. worker to do the job. – San Diego Tribune
The research on the skills shortage is conclusive. Every independent (that is non-industry-funded) entity that has evaluated the issue has stated that the only “struggle” companies face is to find workers at the price they want to pay. We cover this in the article How Low Hire Rates Disprove the IT Labor Shortage Used to Justify H1-Bs.
Media coverage on the H1-B program is invariably written by those that repeat H1-B lobby talking points. The article from the San Diego Tribune repeatedly uses H1-B talking points without any validation of the claims. It is not even clear who the author of the article is, and it may merely be a paid placement from industry.
Brainless or Rigged Coverage from Dice
Recent coverage from the media has focused on the increase in denials, without observing the rampant H1-B fraud, as the following excerpt from Dice shows.
AT&T is engaged in sweeping layoffs, according to a new report from Axios, which also suggested that the telecom giant is engaged in significant outsourcing.
“AT&T is poised to send thousands into the new year hunting for new jobs after assigning them to train their own foreign replacements,” Axios wrote, based on documents and firsthand conversations with laid-off workers. “They aren’t being offered severance or early retirement, and may not easily find a comparable job elsewhere with similar pay.”
“At least 12 companies that provide professional or IT services to other U.S. companies, including Accenture, Capgemini and others, had denial rates over 30 percent through the first three quarters of FY 2019,” the report (PDF) added. “Most of these companies had denial rates between 2 percent and 7 percent as recently as FY 2015.”
Did Dice consider for one second the fact that that the H1-B program is not to be used to replace US workers? The first quote from Dice contradicts the second quote. Did a human write this article or was this, or did a robot write it?
It entirely bypasses the topic of whether the H1-B applications are even valid, focusing on denial rates as if they are unrelated to validity. This article is utterly brainless — it directly reports happenings, like a play by play announcer. Of course, who knows what Dice’s financial incentives are — they place people, and I think they get paid by hiring companies. So why does Dice care about anything but its revenue stream? No doubt hiring companies gave Dice a nice little doggie biscuit for writing such H1-B coverage.
*BTW, notice the comments on the articles, they are entirely divergent in opinion from the article’s author’s take. This is a common feature of articles versus comments on H1-B articles.
This Dice article is utterly brainless — it directly reports happenings, like a play by play announcer. Of course, who knows what Dice’s financial incentives are — they place people, and I think they get paid by hiring companies.
And the issue with complaining about the rejection of worker visas without analyzing WHY there are so many rejections is covered in the following quotation.
Rather than slow alarm at high levels of rejection as red flags for the same kind fo historic fraud that has riddled B-1, EB-5, and H1-B, Big Tech groups smugly challenged the “training, supervision, and procedures” of the career civil servants adjudicating petitions. Then they pointed to an uptick in “requests for evidence” as de facto evidence of wrongdoing without providing any of their own evidence that the decisions were unwarranted. – Sold Out
Making Big Money in Displacement
There is an entire industry built up now around US worker displacement. There is a lot of money to be made in H1-B, and correspondingly significant incentives to lie.
The H1-B program’s initial intent was only to bring in the most exceptionally skilled individuals.
- First, the initial intent of the H1-B program has been hijacked to bring over what is the majority of cases very average workers. Roughly 1/2 of the H1-B visa applications are for Level 1 employees, or the least experienced workers as we cover in the article How the Pay Level of H1-B Visa Workers Contradicts Industry’s High Skills Arguments.
- Secondly, there are no protections within any of the H1-B supporting law that requires companies to first look for US workers.
- Third, the H1-B program is barely enforced, as the departments that are responsible for managing the H1-B program are underresourced and have policies in place that require they speed the way for H1-B workers.
The entire program is functioning as if the H1-B lobby remotely controlled it.
Evidence of Massive US Worker Displacement and Discrimination by Companies Against US Citizens
As we cover in the article The Amazing Fact That 99.7% of Tata Consulting is Indian. It Tata Consulting, which has a huge US presence is 99.7% Indian, then how can Tata make the argument that they searched for US workers first?
We covered the enormous number of H1-Bs visa workers brought into the US by Cognizant in the article Cognizant Receives Approval for 28,908 H1-B Visas in a Single Year.
Did Cognizant first try to find US citizens for each of these 28,908 US-based jobs? The question is rhetorical. The INS had to evaluate every single one of these visas and would have reviewed many more than it approved, and found nothing odd about one company hiring 28,908 H1-B workers. Nearly every one of those jobs will displace a US worker, as this is Cognizant’s business model — outsourcing.
Cognizant is like all of the Indian outsourcing firms, along with American firms like Accenture and IBM, they are H1-B mills that serves as a conduit for indentured Indian labor in the US with the specific strategy of displacing US workers. When this happens, the worker loses their job, and the cost savings are pushed upward, to both senior management at the outsourcing firm and the executives at the client company.
Corporate Business Models Based On H1-Bs and Labor Exploitation
The strategy of so many companies regarding the H1-B program is visible, and the US government is complicit. Single companies to bring in tens of thousands of H1-B workers to be brought into the US to displace US workers. All without having the resources to verify the H1-B petitions, as we cover in the article, The INS Lacks Resources to Review H1-B Petitions According to US Office and Management and Budget.
Why Are H1-B Program Details Being Deleted from US Department of Labor Website?
This concerning fact about the lack of protections for US workers versus H1-Bs is explained in the following quotation.
The Labor Department itself spelled out the lack of US worker protections in the clearest way possible in a document found on its website that has now been deleted. “H1-B workers may be hired even when a qualified US worker wants the job, and a US worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker.” – Sold Out
Why was this document deleted from the Department of Labor website? Aren’t they proud of this fact, and don’t they want this fact widely known? Isn’t that part of the job of government departments, to communicate the truth of their programs and policies? Are they deleting details that might engender anger among the domestic population?
Did the Department of Labor receive pressure from the H1-B lobby?
Whose interests does the Department of Labor represent….US citizens or the H1-B lobby?
It appears to be the latter.
Active Replacement of EXISTING Workers
It is absurd for the H1-B lobby to continue to propose that attempts must be made to make sure a US citizen can do the job when wholesale replacements of US citizens by H1-B workers that already were doing jobs is commonplace.
The Story of H1-B US Worker Displacement at AIG
The example below is from AIG, the company that years after the case study presented below wrote six times its book value in credit default swaps, and had to be bailed out by taxpayers at the cost of at least $182 billion (and then promptly paid out $165 million in executive bonuses). AIG was writing what amounted to insurance but did so without putting any reserves aside for dealing with loses. Their view that there would never be any loses in the credit default swap market.
Was this a good decision by AIG’s management? It wasn’t, but it was ok because while they booked the profits when the loses came in 2008, they handed those loses over the US taxpayers.
Senior managers announced that the workers in the room were being fired and replaced by foreign guest workers. AIG had contracted with an offshoring company called Syntel Inc to import foreign workers to run their computer operations. Syntel would hire workers in India and bring them into the US. On H1-B guest worker visas. AIG management callously boasted to their soon to be former employees that they expected to save $11 million by replacing them with cheap foreign labor.
A couple of years after the bloodletting, John (a fired former AIG employee) had an opportunity to do computer consulting at AIG. He became part of the cleanup crew for the resulting H1-B disaster. Rather than being “highly skilled,” the workers supplied by Syntel were blithering incompetents. The programming work John and his team had to wade through and clean up looked like the work for high school age programmers. – Sold Out
It seems like the $11 million “saved” could have been better used analyzing the credit default swaps that AIG wrote that resulted in a $182 billion bailout.
When Monopolists “Leverage” H1-B Visa Workers
These replacements of US citizens have occurred at companies that have a high degree of monopoly power and don’t “compete” in the economy in an ordinary sense, companies like Bank of America and Pfizer. Pfizer, for example, does no pharmaceutical research beyond evaluating original research performed by universities. Pfizer only performs clinical trials, runs marketing and sales and makes monopoly profits through their political contributions and control over the pharmaceutical system.
Yet when it comes to their IT employees, they also decided to replaced US citizens with H1-B workers.
Because they have to compete?
No, because they have a desire to push even more income to the top executives. The use of H1-B visas to displace US workers by firms like AIG, Bank of America and Pfizer and others that do not compete and receive monopoly profits, and government bailouts, illustrates very clearly that the use of H1-B workers is about profits and not competition.
Conclusion
The H1-B lobby is exploiting the fact that the H1-B program is not understood. Many companies have a significant financial incentive to continue to deceive US workers to keep them from rising against the program.
Many companies have a specific strategy for displacing US workers with H1-Bs. As we cover in the article How Companies Illegally Advertised for H1-B Visa Holders Only, they explicitly advertise FOR H1-Bs over US citizens. We include in the article How IBM Advertised for OPT Student Visa Holders for Low Paid Jobs, how IBM even advertized for people in the US on student visas.
The only reason these advertisements are not commonplace is that they are illegal. However, that is not the same as proving that the company already tried to find a US citizen. Companies prefer H1-B workers because they are less expensive, can be coerced into overtime and are highly controllable. The H1-B lobby prefers H1-B workers so much, that if they had their preferences, they would undoubtedly prefer that all US workers work under the conditions of H1-B workers.
A perfect world for many elitists is where H1-B proponents like Eric Schmidt, who is worth $9 billion, and the rest of the population is working under an H1-B visa. And why? You know, so that we can compete — whatever that means.
And to attain that vision, many will tell any lie they need to about the H1-B program.
References
*https://www.amazon.com/Sold-Out-Billionaires-Bipartisan-Crapweasels/dp/1501115944/
https://www.thebalance.com/aig-bailout-cost-timeline-bonuses-causes-effects-3305693
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/editorials/story/2019-11-19/h1b-visas-approval-rate-skilled-workers-trump
*https://insights.dice.com/2019/12/30/att-layoffs-outsourcing-h-1b-denials/