Gaming the Corporate Visa System
American workers keep hearing a reassuring promise: Learn new tech skills “and you’ll have no problem finding jobs” in the booming information economy, said Patt Morrison. Well, tell that to about 250 Disney data system employees and 400 Southern California Edison tech workers who were recently handed pink slips. Before being marched out the door, the workers were told to train their replacements: lower-paid Indian workers brought in on temporary H-1B visas. H-1Bs are supposed to be reserved for highly specialized jobs “that companies supposedly can’t find American workers to fill.” The fact that fired Americans are training foreigners to replace them “shows that rule for the fiction it is.”
For U.S. companies, many of which are lobbying Congress to authorize more than the 85,000 H-1Bs now issued each year, the “bait and switch” makes perfect sense. They get to pay foreign workers sharply lower salaries, and they don’t have to worry about pesky problems like funding retirement plans or contending with unions. When the visas expire, the workers are simply sent home. Some lawmakers have vowed to scrutinize the H-1B program and close the loopholes that allow these “dirty tricks.” Let’s hope they act fast. “Outsourcing is bad enough, but this is insou rcing, and the way it’s being done is unconscionable.”
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