Not enough tools legally, admits Jeh Johnson.
AB Wire
WASHINGTON, DC: The Department of Homeland Security is legally helpless to punish companies that violate H-1B visa rules, and wants Congress to help them enforce penalties, said Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, at an oversight hearing on immigration enforcement.
“That’s actually something where I think Congress may be able to help us,” he said, when asked on enforcement in such cases, reported the Investor’s Business Daily. “It’s my understanding that we don’t have enough tools legally to deal with that kind of situation, assuming it occurs. What people have told me is that we could use some help from Congress to bolster our enforcement capabilities.”
U.S. employers, including Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) and Southern California Edison, are under scrutiny for laying off U.S. workers while hiring foreign workers through outsourcing firms such as India-based Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys (NYSE:INFY), under the H-1B program. Some employees had to train their replacements. At the request of a bipartisan group of senators, the Department of Labor is investigating the matter, reported the Daily.
Disney has since reversed the decision to lay off its U.S. workers, but the controversy over H-1B visas has been reignited.
The H-1B program provides 85,000 temporary visas a year to foreigners who work in specialty occupations, typically in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Employers argue that the program is necessary because they are unable to find the skills they need in the U.S. labor pool.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates has testified before Congress, asking to raise the number of foreign workers allowed in the country.
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and a number of tech leaders are part of FWD.us, an organization that aims address immigration reform. Zuckerberg has also advocated for more H-1B visas for “talented specialists” in the opinion pages of the Washington Post.
Some members of Congress have listened to the pleas, reported the Daily. Sen. Orrin Hatch’s Immigrant Innovation Act, also known as I-Squared, proposes to increase the H-1B cap from 65,000 to 115,000 and allow the cap to go up to 195,000 if early fillings exceed the cap.
7 Comments
99% of indiAn companies do manipulate the resumes with false experience and education. Department of homeland security should raid all these companies and investigate thoroughly.
Firstly they have to figure out whole situation then take sufficient steps regarding the same. I this this comes under homeland security. I have heard a firm that’s homeland security based and provide smac solutions (social,mobile, analytics and cloud). They serve various govt. and law enforcement bodies. They provide various application that is user friendly.
I think the current problem is that the H1B is abused by some companies to replace American workers. The fault is on those companies, nor H1B visa itself. Just like you can NOT forbid the sale of guns merely because someone uses a gun to murder a good man. What should be done is to set more restrictions and more requirements on it. Simply adjusting the cap will NOT solve the problem.
I honestly cannot believe Mr Gates stood there with a straight face and asked for more H1B visas where he should be asking Congress to increase spending on STEM and refunding our ancient school system…
Companies such as MS is just using companies like Infosys / Tata / Aditi / HCL as pawns to to fill jobs with their excessive ‘in-sourcing’… granted some of their people coming in some are very skilled people I have worked with some very good engineers while others I had absolutely no idea how they even got in the door … but that just adds fuel to the fire that there is more ‘favoritism’ towards Indians by other Indians who get higher up to hire more…
it is definitely a culture shock where your office ambient conversation noise is full of folks talking Hindi and other languages from the many provinces…there is the deal of being a international company but when a whole group is made of in-sourced employees it can be hard to adjust and collaborate effectively if you are not good at picking through the accents. Some people simply cannot do it, I’ve been in the thick of it long enough it is not an issue for me to understand even the thickest of them.
Still there is a serious abuse of this system going on by US companies and this revolving door of exploitation needs to be closed. You can bet we need people to speak out about this as Disney got the broilers turned on by all the negative press… we need people to demand this be fixed and roast congress, the senate and every other pigeon in DC to get them to stop catering to corporations and go back to listening to ‘We The People’ … and I don’t care what the Supreme Court ruled…Corporations are NOT people!
They claim to be helpless, but it is not true.
All they have to do is to declare that a company is a “willful offender”,
and all H1-B applications from that company are automatically rejected.
It is under the control of an ALJ, which means that the regular courts
cannot provide any injunction.
The fact is that the DOL has no desire to enforce the laws.
Usually H1 visas are given if US Companies can’t get local workers by advertising the job vacancies first.US Companies which use H1 visa holders to replace US workers are guilty,and they should be made accountable for this,not the companies who supply H1 visa staff from abroad.Some sort of additional tax to the government would make them fall in line.
You are completely mistaken. Do you know anything about H1-B?