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Tech Companies Are Colluding To Cheat H1-B Visa Lottery (wsj.com) 121

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The Biden administration says it has found evidence that several dozen small technology companies have colluded to increase the chances that their prospective foreign hires will win a coveted H-1B visa for skilled foreign workers in this year's lottery. From a report: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that awards H-1B visas, said it has found that a small number of companies are responsible for entering the same applicants into the lottery multiple times, with the alleged goal of artificially boosting their chances of winning a visa. The findings were laid out in a notice to employers viewed by The Wall Street Journal and set to be released Friday. That practice, according to the agency, is in large part responsible for inflating demand for the visas to a record high this year, with 781,000 entries into the lottery for 85,000 visa slots. Some of that increase in demand is organic, government data shows. About 350,000 applicants for H-1B visas submitted one entry into the lottery this year, compared with about 307,000 last year.

A much greater share of the increase, the data shows, can be attributed to applicants whose names were submitted by multiple companies. A large proportion of the duplicate entries, the immigration agency says, were submitted by a handful of the same companies. Some 96,000 people submitted multiple visa entries, for a total of about 408,000 entries. Though it isn't technically illegal for a foreign worker to have multiple companies submit visa applications on their behalf, companies submitting applications must attest that they have a real job for the employee in question if they win a visa. If companies that win a visa then quickly contract an employee out to third parties, or lay off an employee on the visa so he or she can switch companies, that could potentially amount to fraud.
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Tech Companies Are Colluding To Cheat H1-B Visa Lottery More

Tech Companies Are Colluding To Cheat H1-B Visa Lottery

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  • Well . . . (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Crowded ( 6202674 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @01:35PM (#63483444)

    Well . . . yeah.

  • Easy way to deal with this. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @01:37PM (#63483450)
    Any company involved in this should lose their ability to hire H1-B workers, and possibly any foreign worker. I know this may inadvertently affect the foreign workers, but there are plenty of U.S. workers that can fill those jobs, and they should come first.

    • Re:Easy way to deal with this. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jonadab ( 583620 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @01:50PM (#63483506) Homepage Journal
      The problem with that is right there in the summary:

      > ... it isn't technically illegal for a foreign worker to have multiple
      > companies submit visa applications on their behalf ...

      The obvious solution to this, is to *make* it illegal for the same applicant to be applying for multiple H1B visas for different jobs for different companies (which, honestly, really isn't something you want people doing anyhow, given how many more people there are who would like to get into the country this way, than we really want to accommodate in any given year). Then going forward you can just summarily disqualify anyone who does it, et voila, the practice quickly goes away (or at least becomes very much less common). Robert is avuncular.

      Honestly, when it comes to sorting out immigration crises, H1B is easy mode. The really thorny one, is figuring out what the heck to do with all the folks who are fleeing a situation in their home country that's so bad, they'd literally rather spend the next 40 years in a federal prison than go back where they came from. Philosophically, you'd like to let as many of them in as possible, but there are so *many* of them, that it's a fairly serious problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        They're already falsifying the applications by claiming to have a position ready for the prospective H1-B when, in fact, they intend to immediately send them to someone else.

        • Yeah MSPs should not be able to hire new H1Bs. Not when the H1B is presented as a way to fill needed labor. Nobody needs a body to pimp out on contracts that don’t even exist yet.

          • In what sense is that any different than hiring an engineer? You don't necessarily know what particular projects they will work on yet, you just know that you need more people at your company helping you write software or build bridges or whatever.

            Surely it's legal for a company who writes software under contract to hire people on H1-Bs because they known that they'll need more developers to fulfill the contracts they'll get next year. How is this different?

            • Dude you know the difference I’m not going to twist myself in knots explaining why pimping out h1bs is more of a want than a need.

        • Isn't that a position? It's legal to have a business that employs people for the purpose of contracting them out to other companies.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            From TFA:

            Though it isn’t technically illegal for a foreign worker to have multiple companies submit visa applications on their behalf, companies submitting applications must attest that they have a real job for the employee in question if they win a visa. If companies that win a visa then quickly contract an employee out to third parties, or lay off an employee on the visa so he or she can switch companies, that could potentially amount to fraud.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by doc1623 ( 7109263 )
        Almost no-one in IT is fleeing persecution. Yes, there is persecution in India, but not like in central and South America. This visa isn't for that and I disagree as to a simple fix. I've already commented, but 1. 60K min set in 1989 2. not meant to replace American workers, but it does now just cheaper, more abusable labor, and management. I've had Indian managers, make us "on call" nightly for normal business because they wanted 24 coverage without hiring another shift. I had to quit. Never off work didn'

        • Fix what? You IT people don't support unions. Most of you seem to think you are God's gift to labor in fact. Just look at some of the post on here as proof.

      • The common theme in all of these issues: politicians don't WANT to solve the immigration crisis. They want no solutions around issues pertaining to immigration, since it's so much more profitable to exploit the problems for political gain.

        • They presumably also want maids and gardeners. Don't forget they can exploit the new laborers as well!

      • I'm not sure you *should* make it illegal to submit multiple applications. Don't we want the people who are the most in demand to be most likely to get a visa?

        Honestly, probably the best way to do this is to somehow auction of the H1-B visa slots (or maybe add a special tax to earnings of said workers and give the visas to whatever workers have the highest salary offers).

        • How can we possibly need H1-Bs when we have been laying off thousands of workers from IT companies in the past year? Seems a little backwards to me. We have plenty of citizens that now need work and already have IT experience.

      • and America's unwillingness to pay enough for it to attract workers (no, $15/hr or even $20 isn't enough to break your body like that, go watch John Oliver's video on the subject for why) we've got plenty of space for them, but we don't want legally admitted refugees. We want illegals we can abuse and threaten with deportation so we can pay them a fraction of minimum wage.
      • I think the obvious answer is to just ignore duplicate entries for the purposes of lottery selection. Johnny has 1 company putting him in the H1-B lottery, he gets 1 number in the big hat. Oh, Johnny's got 50 companies entering him in the H1-B lottery? Too bad, one number in the big hat. Maybe give Johnny a choice as to which company he goes to. Or not, whatever.

      • figuring out what the heck to do with all the folks who are fleeing a situation in their home country that's so bad, they'd literally rather spend the next 40 years in a federal prison than go back where they came from.

        There aren't many of those, so it's not really a problem either.

      • Or just down-weight the chance of them winning by how many applications they have.

    • Re:Easy way to deal with this. (Score:4, Informative)

      by doc1623 ( 7109263 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @02:34PM (#63483642)
      That's the problem. H1-B was intended for "Highly Skilled" jobs that America was short on. It was never intended to replace American workers, but that is now the main purpose because 60K (min set in 1989) for someone with 15+ years of experience isn't enough now. I would say trash H1-B completely, at least in regard to IT, until a better program, that doesn't Attack American workers. Make no mistake, it has.

    • Re: Easy way to deal with this. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by slazzy ( 864185 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @03:21PM (#63483814) Homepage Journal
      Also any company doing mass layoffs shouldnâ(TM)t be allowed to hire H1-B workers for the next few years
    • It isn't just the "company" involved in the request. The problem is that these are "outsourcing" agencies that are doing it. In other words, they are contracting to other companies. At worst that simply means next year for the H1B's, they register a new company that is no longer banned, and place the requests. These applicants in many situations will be contracted to another company or to a parent company that then supplies outsourcing services to other companies.

      The way you fix it is to make H1B's what th

    • ok then jacks staffing will close and then jays staffing will just hire the same people.

  • They are laying off 1000's so (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @01:39PM (#63483454)
    why do they need to hire more H1B visa holders?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by migos ( 10321981 )
      Example: you find a Stanford new grad with phd in CS, you get them H1-B or whatever it is to keep them in US. Unemployment is still near historical low. There's still a shortage of qualified STEM candidates.

      • Re:They are laying off 1000's so (Score:5, Insightful)

        by XopherMV ( 575514 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @01:57PM (#63483516) Journal
        Amazon has laid off 27,000 people, Meta has laid off 21,000, Microsoft has laid off 10,000, and Google has laid off 10,000 workers in recent months. Those are just the largest employers. Plenty of other companies have laid off tech workers too.

        So no, there is no shortage of engineers right now - today.

        That new grad from Stanford with a PhD in CS needs to return home to whatever country they're from. There are plenty of STEM workers already in the US that need jobs.

        • Re: They are laying off 1000's so (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @02:32PM (#63483632) Homepage

          That's the opposite of what you want! Definitely keep the Stanford PhD, make it easy for them to get a green card, that's who you want. But don't give random Bangalore polytechnic (not actual school) graduates an H1b to come for a low end engineering job via an agency basically just train in a US company and return to outsource one more position.

        • Re:They are laying off 1000's so (Score:4, Insightful)

          by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @02:36PM (#63483652)

          So no, there is no shortage of engineers right now - today.

          You mean there's no shortage of greed right now. Or ever.

          The reason those visas are "coveted" by American companies is because it enables them to hire cheaper. The room we're politely insisting there's no elephant in, is now 3 feet deep in elephant shit.

          It's well past time to call that spade. As if it were ever about shortages.

        • How many of those were technical positions? Amazon, Microsoft, and other big tech firms aren't just hiring programmers. I'd wager there were a lot of marketing people or other non-technical positions included in those numbers.
        • I don't think it works the way you think it does. Each of those companies is constantly spinning up and winding down projects, and the days when people were moved between projects to maintain company loyalty are long gone. Teams are just laid off at the end of projects and new teams are hired for new ones. I think these companies were fairly shy about layoffs during covid, and people were throwing money at tech because it was suddenly essential to getting work done. Both of those things are now over, so

        • I've advocated that a resource working under an H1-B be paid the average prevailing wage at a minimum for that position. Do that and the market for H1-B Visas will dry up fast.
          Companies already outsource huge amounts of tech work to offshore-based providers. That way they can keep their hands clean of any labor issues and not pay any benefits. It's the Nike model of global plantation work.

          Big Tech has become a race to the bottom to find the cheapest labor possible that's barely passable as experienced.

      • I think US uni Masters/PhD holders are a different category, at least last time I checked the were on a separate quota. The H1b lottery is historically mainly used by big Indian outsourcing agencies to bring relatively low paid non-us educated employees, train them in the US and send them back as desirable low cost outsourcing workforce.

      • You're not going to fix it by destroying school/training or the incentives to join these fields, as you outsource to cheaper labor. Executives shouldn't be able to comment here. You are overpaid, there are many studies showing that. While worker pay/benefits have declined significantly. Invest in America and stop hording money that isn't "trickling" past your greedy fingers.
        • The simple answer: outsource executives. Do that and suddenly you will see a huge movement to protect US professional jobs.

          Just remember it's all about the greed. There is no such thing as a level playing field. Supply and demand are not a part of the equation.

    • In IT, they don't. It's simply cheaper labor from India. It's a highly abused program in IT that is not being used as intended.
    • voters keep getting pulled in a lot of different directions, largely by culture war issues. Also we have a huge number of voters who aren't in the work economy anymore, they're retired, and they don't fully understand the implications of screwing over their kids and grandkids with their voting decisions.

      Until we stop voting with our guts and start voting with our wallets this isn't going to change.
      • Don't include me. There isn't anyone at the state or federal level I cast a ballot for. Bat s&^t crazy is running things now, whoever they are.
        Maybe someday we'll know who is calling the shots. But ,since things are going so bad, I doubt we'll ever know who really is in charge.
    • We gave it to them in exchange for other things. Mostly culture war issues and moral panics. People put economics and civil rights aside when voting in exchange for being "values voters". And when you point this out it gets really touchy, because folks don't know the difference between civil rights issues (like asset forfeiture or access to medical care) and culture war issues.

      I suppose if they did we wouldn't be having this conversation.
      • "I suppose if they did we wouldn't be having this conversation." maybe, maybe not! Could just be orchestrated misdirection to cover up the truth.
        How do you know if Corporations and Governments are lying? Their lips are moving!

    • Per the summary "several dozen small technology companies".

      You'd have a point if they were talking about Google, Apples, Microsoft, etc.

      I guess an alternative point is that those companies are also doing it but they own the goverment so they use that ownership to strongarm out the smaller players.

      • "several dozen small technology companies". Really! More like human resource companies created and funded by big tech to service big tech. Just smoke and mirrors to look legit. When government and big tech work together the question is not, if it is corrupt. But , what the scale of the corruption is.

  • CIS: *Intentionally make getting a visa as difficult as possible, set nationwide caps that are well below demand*
    Also CIS: *Act shocked when people start trying to game the system*

    I say this as someone who is currently having to deal with CIS's bullshit to get a family member their permanent resident status.

    • It's obviously not too difficult for these Indian IT workers. I would love a study of what percentage of IT departments in the U.S. are H1-B workers. (notice I didn't say employees). It may be too difficult for others, but we could shut down all for visa applicants from Indians for at least a year or more, and still have more Indians than anything else in IT, except for white men. It's that saturated from one country.

  • It's bad because we shouldn't have ANY requirement for immigration, short of an ID and background check. This would destroy any need for "border security" and the whole illegal immigration (migration).

    New Immigrants could be taxed at a slightly higher rate to fund the services needed to support higher immigration rates.

    • Re:H1B lottery is bad (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday April 28, 2023 @02:05PM (#63483542) Homepage Journal

      New Immigrants could be taxed at a slightly higher rate to fund the services needed to support higher immigration rates.

      There's no such thing. Even undocumented immigrants are a net positive economically.

      • Like most things today. Everyone has their own data to create their own stats! That support what they already believe is true.

      • I never said they didn't (or did).

        My point is, undocumented is itself one of the bigger parts of the problem. Document them and unrestricted immigration, everyone gets what they really want (or asking for). They are coming here anyways, might as well get the taxes they'll pay being legitimate. We'll get the side benefit of cutting off the coyotes revenue sources.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

        Net positive as it's entirety? It's undocumented, how do you know? Seems like a lot of assumptions.

        It might be, but this feels like you're guessing to support how you feel. You also really need to define net positive, income is just drawn away from other people living in the country, it doesn't mean a net positive when you include the net negative it has from existing citizens.

        I'm not saying that's the case either but, you know how people manipulate numbers to support their feelings by ignoring other number

      • New Immigrants could be taxed at a slightly higher rate to fund the services needed to support higher immigration rates.

        There's no such thing. Even undocumented immigrants are a net positive economically.

        Really? NYC, which used to call itself a "sanctuary city" before they started bussing aliens from the borders into the city, says it will cost them $10Billion in 2023
        https://nypost.com/2023/03/20/... [nypost.com]

        • $10 billion is 0.6% of NYC's GDP and only a fraction of their yearly GDP increase. If you ever want to hope to understand the situation you need to stop looking at absolute numbers and start looking at them in terms of per something, e.g. per capita, or per unit of GDP increase. Economics doesn't give a shit about absolute numbers you see quoted in garbage tier "news" sources.

  • must attest that they have a real job for the employee in question if they win a visa. If companies that win a visa then quickly contract an employee out to third parties, or lay off an employee on the visa so he or she can switch companies, that could potentially amount to fraud.

    They might be planning the reverse, then it wouldn't be fraud..? Instead of contracting Out the employee - contracting IN their work. For example: You have 10 companies, and the companies are all essentially contractors fil

  • easy solution (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Instead of a "lottery" -- which is an insane way to run an immigration system, if you're an established worker you are crazy to participate in a "lottery" for whether you can uproot your life and move around the world -- just give the visas to the highest paid entrants. This will cut the legs off the firms bringing in cheap labor to displace US jobs, bring in the people who are actually adding value to the US (e.g., MIT grads doing the most difficult work) and bring certainty to the process.

  • Of course they're gaming it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Friday April 28, 2023 @01:55PM (#63483508)

    This is why it should be an auction instead of a lottery.

  • Finally, someone at USCIS is waking up and smelling the coffee. I bet my dollars to your pocket lint that, those companies in this collusion scheme, are all Indian owned sweatshops. I think it is time to put the companies, which only farm out their H-1B workforce to other companies, out to the pasture. Enough is enough.

  • Why would contracting an employee out indicate fraud? It's a legal business to hire people to contract them out to other businesses.

    I'm not sure whether to call this a flaw or a feature of the lottery process, but if you are a particularly valuable person to employee then many companies should be willing to hire you even if it's only to hire you out as a consultant/temp/whatever to a business who will pay highly.

  • As far as It. It's wholly abused. H1-B was meant to replace a skill gab when originally introduced, and never meant to "replace American workers". As part of that goal, a minimum salary of 60K was set in 1989 and it's never been raised. Now, Indian contract companies have replaced entire IT teams, if not the whole department. It's no longer fulfilling it's intended purpose, it's mutated into cheap, abusable labor. We've imported Indian management practices as well, which don't include workers rights, at lea

  • Companies justify these hires by saying they are unable to find local workers with the skills they need. I think they use the program to cut costs

    I propose the following rules for H1-B hires.

    1) H1-B hires must be the highest paid workers because they are the cream of the crop and possess skills the firm is unable to find elsewhere
    2) The company hiring H1-B workers must have a plan for replacing them with a non-H1-B within 2 years
    3) Companies that lay off full-time employees may not hire H1-B workers into r

    • I think there's an even easier solution, just tax H1Bs. I don't mean taxing the workers with H1B visas extra, but instead charge additional payroll taxes for the employers. If employers really need them and really can't find Americans who can do the job, then they'll put up with paying the extra cost. And as a positive side effect there'll be extra money for Medicare and Social Security.

      Right now, employers pay about 7.5% of your salary (with caveats for high earners) to the federal government for Social

      • I think there's an even easier solution, just tax H1Bs. I don't mean taxing the workers with H1B visas extra, but instead charge additional payroll taxes for the employers. If employers really need them and really can't find Americans who can do the job, then they'll put up with paying the extra cost. And as a positive side effect there'll be extra money for Medicare and Social Security.

        Right now, employers pay about 7.5% of your salary (with caveats for high earners) to the federal government for Social Security and Medicare on top of what they pay you. If we make that 30% (4X) for employers of an H1B workers, then I think it would give employers the incentive to hire Americans when possible, but still allow them to find employees when need be. Keep some of the requirements like needing to pay H1B workers the market rate, but maybe allow more H1B workers in each year.

        What do you think?

        I'm ok with your proposal. The extra taxes help pay for the workers that get cut.

        I just think it makes no sense that employers are allowed to pay H1-B's "average" salary for the position when they claim these are specialists they can't find locally. If they are specialists they should get paid top dollar, not "average".

        I accidentally left out
        (5) H1-B's should be allowed to change jobs easily

  • If you try to cheat the system then the C suite goes to jail for life. I bet the colluding and cheating will stop immediately.

  • And some how, we still need H1-b visas? That sure seems odd. Sure glad we have a Democrat in charge, party for the workers indeed! He'll take care of everything,fear not!

    He couldn't possibly do worse then the last guy anyway.

  • This is heavily abused by tech companies and worse, turns visa holders into indentured servants. Instead, increase the number of green cards, that are tied only to fields that America needs.
  • I doubt that we will kill H1B, though we should, but at this time, we need to simply block any applicant that is listed with more than 1 companies, along with ALL of those companies and their applicants.

    once companies and all of their appplicants are disqualified, ppl will get picky who they apply with.

  • Corrupt and Communal Indians should be expelled from USA https://www.petition2congress.... [petition2congress.com]

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