Every time discussion about H-1B comes up here, many people chime in on the potential abuses from large international outsourcers like Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, IBM, Accenture etc. But IME, the most egregious abuses come from small American staffing companies as those run by the accused here. The absolute number of H-1B applications they file and get are smaller, but they occupy the long tail of the distribution. Also, the same fraudulent operators run multiple such companies. The accused in this case - Kishore Kumar Kavuru - ran four such companies. In the other case mentioned in the article the accused - Pradyumna Kumar Samal - two such companies.
I hope these two cases don't go the way of the one against Raju Kosuri. Kosuri, a naturalized American citizen, plead guilty [1] to serious charges of immigration fraud. But due to some technicality in the prosecution's case, Kosuri was handed down a mere 28 months to serve, and is scheduled to be deported to India [2].
Off-topic question: India does not accept dual citizenship. So when the Kosuris became naturalized citizens, they must have given up their India citizenship. Given that, why should India accept them back after they were deemed criminals in their adopted country? What is the legality around revoking naturalized US citizenship?
[1]: https://www.scribd.com/document/322254486/Kosuri-Plea
[2]: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/12/24/indian-nationa...
This is good. I have seen a lot of workers/friends who applied legitimately get fucked because of this kind of abuse of the system.
I still think expansion of the h1b program is necessary since there is a lot of demand. But curbing the abuse will definitely help the current set of people opting to use the legal way.
H1b needs to end - it’s modern version of serfdom.
If country has shortage of critical skilled workers - bring them in permanently, based on a system similar to what Canada has.
This man is a symptom of a wider problem.
Once when I visited Hyderabad, I was surprised by the staggering number of IT institutes in the city (around Ameerpet). There's just no way so many people can find a job, but somehow they do! Fraudulent claims in resumes and job applications are very common - and HR folks often advise interviewers to verify claims in depth. IT jobs fraud is an industry.
Here's a picture from Ameerpet which shows the sheer scale of the IT training market there: https://imgur.com/a/AUogLtu
H1B visas are a hot topic here, and always lead to heated voting.
I will just point out one thing:
1. How many immigrants come (total number per year)
2. How they are selected (merit or family)
3. Where they come from (the wisdom of country caps)
Are three separate issues that need not be conflated. People tend to give a mixed solution based on their personal experience.
The economic incentives here are a tough nut to crack. Here they are:
1. Most first time H1B Visas are taken up by an employee that are paid(typically) less that the college educated US worker. Pay amortized over the lifetime of this employee is even lower because part of it was in places like India where the PPP is much higher and labor is cheap.
2. You can make a lot of money by staying on the edges of the law. For example body shops/consultants.
3. Try stopping such body shops and IT CoS will cause jobs to disappear forever into India. This is the part that most policy makers gloss over. Sure FAANG could hire US side that but they are minority of H1B applications filed.
Possible Changes:
0. Separate all categories from the Quota based Green Card residency filing. This will end the perverse incentive for certain H1B and L1 workers to come to the US for the sole purpose of citizenship. Especially the under the stupid EB1 manager cap.
1. Make it easier for people on H1B categories to study, change jobs and providing for gaps between employment that are reasonable. This will make people less beholden and less exploitable by body shops.
2. Introduce a points based system for Permanent Residence that will award citizenship fairly to everyone based on real effort put in by people to get here. Things like education, language, diversity, age all should count. This will chip away at incentives attached to certain visa types.
3. Completely separate the H1B Visa processing for US college educated from the other pool of H1B workers. Make more granular categories for work visa.
It should be made more complicated for companies to easily "import" skills that are not so hard to learn. Companies should train their employees for the coming new skills required. This is what Swiss companies were doing when it was impossible to immigrate in Switzerland. And the employee-employer relationship was a lot healthier than today.
H-1B visas aren't even given out to people with specialized knowledge, new grads are able to get them.
isnt this simply a problem with the application process? Simple verification that the job/employer exist would close this “loop hole”, no?
Just one there are hundreds across the country. They all play the same game identify hot techs and hire people and bring them here and then bench them till work shows up. Trump has accomplished nothing so far.
For a "human trafficking" operation 600 people over a decade seems like a fairly small scale operation..
In terms of harm, these workers are clearly in demand, so apart from being unfair to other staffing agencies and H1B applicants, this really doesn't do much harm..
H1B is a pretty broken concept to begin with.. I was H1B for 4 years before I decided Trump-land wasn't a good place to set roots.
If you have demand for tech workers and tech workers willing to move. I think most countries and cities would move heaven and Earth to make things work out. Everybody wants to be silicon valley :)
(I don't see why SV has to have the problems it has, they seem fixable)
This program needs to end. H1B a bandaid over our complete failure to provide a modern education and bring young people into STEM, while dually deflating middle class wages for the tech oligarchs across the industry for several decades. And, ironically, the Democrats, who should supposedly be protecting the middle class, have a blood pact with the SV elite.
Before I clicked on the link, I suspected it would be an Indian. I've dealt with a few such "recruiters" in London as well. Slimy individuals preying on those trying to secure a better future.
Even before clicking the link I thought it would be an Indian guy. Cause the headline sounded odd! I don't know why only Indians are doing this shit predominantly. This will lead to other Indians getting abused given how negative and fake news spreads today!
I don't see why this is particularly newsworthy. "Man accused of small amount of fraud" is barely a headline in other areas, why is this instance such a major deal?
The laws criminalizing immigration need to repealed. Then there wouldn't be such a market incentivizing people to engage in fraud simply to bring people together.
The obvious solution (making h1b non-transferable across employers again, without even the 30 day window) probably causes more harm than benefit here.
I assume someone could abusively misuse h1b in the traditional Wipro/Infosys way anyway, by doing staffing companies. His fraud was just more capital efficient but not that fundamentally different.
It is probably unpopular, but I think h1b should be ended. Genuine short term needs should be covered through something like L1, and aside from specific categories of non-immigrant visa like medical or educational, we should just expand immigrant visas on a Canadian/NZ style merit/points system. This would be less discriminatory against people from big countries (China and India specifically), avoid some of the abuse possibilities, and be better for employees/immigrants and their families. The only losers would be body shops and large employers who benefit today from a limited form of indenture.