The Real H-1B Visa System...

From BusinessWeek: Outsourcing: How to Skirt the Law
June 22, 2007, 12:01AM EST

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...Want to hire cheaper foreign workers instead of Americans? A lawyer tells you how to game the immigration system—and it's all on YouTube"

"...It's a group of lawyers openly discussing strategies for helping their clients pretend that they're trying to recruit American workers—as required by law—while they, in fact, hire cheaper foreign workers...

"[O]ur goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker," ... The trick, according to Cohen & Grigsby attorneys, is to only go through the motions of hiring Americans without ever intending to.
..."

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Click the link at the top of this entry to read the entire article.


The practice described in this "training video" isn't top secret. Any engineer in the industry knows how this is done. It's obvious, blatant and common practice.

To hear anyone on the inside actually talk about it in public and allow it to be taped IS amazing.

The only thing driving this flawed H-1B system is money. So how should this flagrant abuse be fixed?

Since the single motive here is money, specifically the disparity in the amount of money required to employ and keep a U.S. hire .vs. an H-1B, the solution is simple.

Eliminate the cost disparity.

Either US workers will have to be willing to work the job at the same wage as H-1B's and also work for reduced company paid benefit packages to equalize the cost of using an H-1B hire.

--or--

The government increases the cost of using an H-1B hire to nullify the cost differential.

Let's have the government eliminate the yearly call for increasing the H-1B quota, charge $1m for each H-1B visa granted and charge a yearly fee of $100k to keep it.

I predict that companies would suddenly find lots and lots of "qualified" U.S. engineers.

This would be a win/win/win solution. More U.S. workers have jobs, the companies that still need imported workers could hire as many H-1B's as they could afford and the government gets a new income source to help offset the budget deficit.

Anyone else have a better idea? Use the comments section and if I see a better solution, I'll append it here.

(I wonder if "Carbon Life Form Offset Credits" would work in this situation? Quick, get Al on the phone!...)