Government Seeks $1.4 Million in H1-B back pay!
Long time readers will know how I feel about the H1-B visa issue.
Look, in the IT business, the H1-B visa program is well known for the rampant abuse and the undercutting of salaries for American workers.
For you who are new to the blog, here’s the basic run-down. I think American workers should get jobs, of all kinds, not just tech jobs, before we import workers. But, we should import skilled workers who will pay taxes before we send those jobs off-shore. The reason I don’t like the H1-B visa program in particular is because I know for a fact that it was used to unfairly, and apparently illegally, undercut American workers and put them out on the street in favor of grossly underpaid imports.
Well, in a small bit of good news there, eWeek is reporting that the Federal government is going after $1.4 million in wages that H1-B visa holders were cheated out of via Peri Software Solutions. For those of us in the industry, I don’t think it’s any surprise that these folks had offices in India and had cheated 163 Indian IT people out of more than $1.4 million dollars in fair pay. Pay, incidentally, that they would have paid taxes on to the U.S.
While I think this is a great step, I can’t help but wonder, how many more companies like this are there who haven’t been caught or prosecuted? How many people have been unfairly abused this way? How many jobs were lost? How long will it take to do something and fix this broken system?
