H-1B Visa Allocation to Top 5 Indian IT Firms Drops by 49%, US Restrictions Compel Tech Companies to Hire More Locals

[Finn_Jarber]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

It shouldn't be hard to find locals to do this work, but the model here is to hire as few FTEs as possible and farm the work out to third-party contractors. This being Dallas/Fort Worth, the big Indian firms all have a strong presence here and there are literally dozens of smaller ones, highly H1B dependent, who aggressively pursue subcontracts from those big firms. Once they've built a relationship with a particular company, you'll find that they flood the department with fresh-off-the-boat unqualified workers who require extensive "knowledge transfers" before they can produce anything of value. They require close and constant supervision and are usually unable to add much value...but they're cheap...so the people in charge keep them around because they know the handful of Americans (and qualified immigrants) still at the company will keep cleaning up the messes they make.

Sounds like you work for some kind of sweat-shop. Our H1Bs make around the same as FTEs, and they are qualified. We'll see if things change if the OP story is true. It could push the work overseas if the Indians have to leave, because they are totally dependent on them. There are companies in Dallas area where practically everyone is from India.

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by MPowering1

And this is the way they make sure no qualified Americans are hired. I knew someone in an F500 HR position who was told not to pass along any IT resumes that might be costly to the company. She knew what this meant and those in IT just figured they couldn't find qualified Americans. Not the case - the hiring process was determined in HR as a result of direction from people much higher in the organization.

Yup, that's one of the ways they do it.

Originally Posted by Finn_Jarber

Sounds like you work for some kind of sweat-shop. Our H1Bs make around the same as FTEs, and they are qualified. We'll see if things change if the OP story is true. There are companies in Dallas area where practically everyone is from India.

This isn't a sweatshop, it's just a badly mismanaged and poorly staffed IT department. That is quite common around here.

[Mistermobile]

Originally Posted by Mr.Hospitality

We can't find qualified people in the high skilled areas. That's not BS. But that has nothing to do with firms abusing the H1B system to bring in thousands of low quality individuals at low cost. And that's what has been happening. These firms have been bringing in thousands of low skilled people that don't bring value, other than cheap labor, to the nation. So it's great that it's dropping and hopefully just coming to an end.

For the high skilled areas where we do have a shortage, the H1B system works well.

For alien applicants with a college degree (B.S. equiv.) the cap remains at 65,000 and higher degrees (up to P.h.Ds), 20,000.

As stated, the regular cap for H1B1visas has 65,000 spots available and the advanced degree or master’s cap has 20,000 spots. The immigration service (CIS) holds a lottery to pick out of a total of about 200,000 petitions H1b1 petitions submitted for that year then similarly a lottery for the advanced degrees spots.

Although the numbers are down, the H1B1 petition numbers submitted were 200K, off 36K from last year, and about 180K petitions were submitted for the 20K slots. So the immigration pressure is still very high.

To read that employment based visa applications are no longer sought after is fake news.
I processed employment based visas for over six years. Skill has nothing to do with it my dear. The visa petition is based on employer requirements which favor the newly graduated. How can a newbie gain work experience? How does a newbie get on in a job after arriving in the US? Why, the U.S. employer trains him. Contract labor is cheap labor,