American Workers ‘Roadkill’ for Lobbyists, Immigration Lawyers
by Wolf Richter
WolfStreet.com
February 7, 2015
IT workers replaced by H-1Bs? Congress caved
Two days ago, I wrote how workers at Southern California Edison’s Information Technology Department (which had 1,800 employees and 1,500 contract workers) were laid off to be replaced by IT workers from India brought in on H1-B visas. The to-be-laid-off American workers, as part of their severance deal, have to train the Indian workers so that they can do the jobs that American workers have been doing.
This isn’t an exception. It’s the rule in American tech. Bringing down the cost of labor is the Holy Grail.
SCE hired two Indian companies, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, among the largest users of H-1B visas, to provide the workers. But H1-B visas aren’t supposed to allow this sort of thing. They’re not supposed to cost American workers their jobs. The article depicted the abuses of the H1-B system and sparked a flood of often excellent and sometimes extensive comments. The issue struck a chord. Here is the article and comments… In Search of Cheap Labor in Tech: Behind the H1-B Visa Scenes
Alas, what we thought were “abuses of the H1-B system” is actually baked into the system purposefully so that these companies aren’t abusing the system – they’re just using it after their lobbyists performed miracles in, as we say, the best Congress money can buy.
The Rest…HERE
