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Paul McNamara

Lawyers in a how-to video: as in how to avoid hiring an American

Publicity surrounding video spurs lawmaker to demand explanation

By Paul McNamara on Tue, 06/19/07 - 9:18am.

Watch this video <!--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU-->and keep it in mind the next time you hear a high-tech industry titan such as Bill Gates complain that he simply cannot find qualified American employees and therefore the country needs more H-1B visas: You'll see a panel discussion that looks like a sit-down with "the families" on The Sopranos, only instead of talking about organized crime these lawyers are discussing the ins and outs of helping employers side-step immigration law.

(Update: Lawmakers demand explanation, threaten probe. Update 2: Other side of the coin: H-1B recipient tells All-American tale.)

The objective, says Lawrence Lebowitz, vice president of marketing at Cohen & Grigsby, couldn't be more straightforward.

"Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified U.S. worker ... our objective is to get this person a green card," Lebowitz tells his audience.

And how does an employer go about doing that in light of the legal obligation to first search for a qualified American? It's all about where you search, he says.

"Clearly we are not going to find a place where the applicants are most numerous, we're going to find a place where - again we're complying with the law - and hoping and likely not to find qualified worker applicants," Lebowitz says.

And if despite looking in all the wrong places a gem of an American candidate pops up anyway?

"If someone looks like they are very qualified, if necessary schedule an interview; go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them," he says.

That's just a taste; there are lots more.

Lebowitz prefaced that first remark - the one about the objective being "not to find a qualified U.S. worker" - by saying, "this may sound funny."

Don't know about anyone else, but I didn't even crack a smile. It doesn't sound funny. It sounds like it ought to be illegal. At the very least, it sounds like Congress should be tightening the screws on current law before increasing the number of H-1Bs.

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Tags

H-1Bs

0
By Stephen Jung (not verified) on Tue, 06/19/2007 - 1:43pm.

I agree. There shouldn't be one single additional H-1B issued in this country until serious reform is enacted. This program all along has been about depressing wages. All of the talk about shortages is a massive fraud on American workers. My consulting rates have been depressed since 2001. In fact in 2001 and 2002 I couldn't hardly get any work at all. In addition almost no one pays travel expenses any more since they can just force the H-1Bs to move to wherever the work is. Not only do these corporations treat these H-1Bs as sub-human they also treat American citizens the same way. They don't care if you have a family, a home or anything else. This sort of worker abuse is undermining the entire US economy since almost everyone is working for less and less even as the cost of living goes higher and higher.

SIMPLE SIMPLE SOLUTION

0
By Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 06/21/2007 - 3:07pm.

REQUIRE Corporations to pay H1-B job candidates the SAME MARKET WAGE that they would pay to an American.

Watch the interest in those H1-B's disappear in a hurry!!!

They shouldn't be paying them so much LESS in any case, this is DISCRIMINATION in the worst way. ENFORCE THE CURRENT LAW!

H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007

0
By Mark (not verified) on Thu, 06/28/2007 - 4:42pm.

Write or call your senators and ask them to support this law under consideration right now by the Judiciary Committee. I wrote mine (Senators Durbin & Obama of Illinois) and I received this in return from Senator Durbin. I hope this helps!

==========================================

I recently introduced the H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007, which has been referred to the Judiciary Committee for consideration. This legislation would add protections for American workers to the H-1B and L-1 visa programs, while at the same time permitting foreign workers to be employed in the United States when needed.

The bill would require that an employer make a good faith effort to recruit American workers before giving jobs to visa holders. Before an employer could submit an H-1B visa application, the employer would have to advertise the job for 30 days on the Department of Labor (DOL) website. This would give American workers the chance to apply for the position. The bill would also give the DOL the ability to conduct random audits of any company that uses the H-1B program and would require such audits for companies with 100 or more workers that have 15% or more of these workers on H-1B visas.

To ensure that companies are not undercutting American workers by paying substandard wages to foreign workers, the proposed legislation would require H-1B and L-1 employers to pay foreign employees the prevailing wage. The bill would also prohibit companies that employ more than 50 people from hiring additional H-1B employees if more than 50% of existing employees are H-1B visa holders.

If the H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007 is enacted into law, it will add important protections to prevent companies from putting American workers at a disadvantage in the job market.

GET SERIOUS, they will just find loopholes in the new law

0
By Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 07/03/2007 - 1:43pm.

Solution:
Moratorium On H-1b, L-12 visas, Investigation Into Abuses, Penalties To Visa Abusers & Compensation Due To American IT Workers that have been Laid Off

This practice is anti American AND illegal. It is artificially increasing the supply of labor in a targeted field - here on US soil, to depress wages. It wreaks havoc in the lives of Americans in the profession because they have prepared themselves for a very specific technical career and have specific training, like a BSCS (Bachelor of Science, Computer Science)

Please read the the immigration law about visas to remind yourself about it. The SPIRIT OF THE LAW is captured in the following excerpt "...the employment of such alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of workers in the United States similarly employed..." To get around the law, they FAKED A SHORTAGE. (Is this a pattern? - faking reasons for desired ends, no matter what the cost to innocent people)

We need a MORATORIUM on H-1B and L-1 and any other high tech type visa until there is a thorough investigation done - and until all the US high tech workers that invested dearly in time & money & DREAMS to educate themselves for a field that they were told was "Hot" are compensated in some way for lots of lost income. There is a flood of Americans that are either unemployed, underemployed, overemployed (doing 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs) because the market for there work just disappeared. All the while the US Dept of Labor was calling IT a "Hot" career - that would be in great demand.

Trust?
How will you know that whatever career your children study for in college will pay off - if they will even be able to even get a job in their chosen field? The job requirements are very specific these days... If the supply of labor is artificially increased (visa limits have been adjusted yearly, so its not like you can plan ahead) because of a supposed shortage. The same thing could happen again in any professional career. It would not take long to flood a targeted profession and cause massive layoffs due to depressed wages (especially with tactics like those shown in the video!)

The Method Of American job disposal:
The profession is targeted, reports are published about shortages, concerned professors and other policy makers will dispute it of course, but the news emphasizes the shortages so that becomes the common belief, visa workers are brought in in increasing numbers (accumulating because they stay for up to 6 years and then no one really tracks whether or not they leave), they are paid less for the job, the abundance of labor causes wage depression in the field. Mid career workers are laid off to make room for the lower priced labor, usually never to be rehired in the field (now tagged as a disgruntled worker). Posting fake job ads is mental cruelty for someone seriously trying to become re-employed in their field.

The next time this happens - in another profession, the difference will be that it will happen FASTER (the method has been tested and streamlined, even the legal support is in place) - especially if they think they can get away with it. And based on the arrogance and aloofness displayed in the video, people in the profession believe it is OK to undermine Americans like that.

I hope Americans STAND UP AND DEMAND THIS. The visa law intended to protect the American worker. (and should) The LAW WAS ABUSED. There was NO SHORTAGE of American IT workers. If there were a shortage, headhunters would be actively looking for IT people, instead unemployed IT workers have to try to hunt down jobs themselves - to no avail. Please don't be so easily lead. This is a TURNING POINT for Americans. How this is handled will effect what happens in many other professions due to this new global economy.

Dennis Kucinich is the only politician I know of that has stated publicly (check his web site (kucinich.us) that an investigation should be done. He is also one of the only politicians that will openly declare he has no strings attached.
The original testimony to Congress on this issue was done back in 1998! Google "Debunking The Myth Of The Desperate Software Labor Shortage". While your at it Google "Immigration Gumballs". (just a little of what is NOT in the news - for starters)

Why am I so passionate about this? Two reasons. I am a displaced IT worker (BSCS), and I have two children.

I hope IT workers that have been laid off will come forward with testimonials.

writting your elected officials

0
By Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 08/12/2007 - 1:34am.

we can and most of us do write to our senators and others it works about as well as electing all those dems last nov. to make the changes the people wanted,see any yet?its a joke i'm sad to say ,we are no longer a democracy,and here we are trying to push it on others.what we need is to start all over again,but 'that' isn't quite possible,get greed and god out of the white house ,now there's a start,but thats not going to happen either,so what is the answer? move out of the country get away from the fall of another Rome! so sad.....

Decline and Fall the American Economic Civilization

0
By Rob (not verified) on Fri, 06/22/2007 - 4:59pm.

Exactly the same experience. Also note the death of the independent American recruiter and the rise of the foreign run body shop in the consulting business. Any country that allows this to happen deserves the scrap heap upon which it will shortly find itself.

Discrimination against National Origin

0
By Rob (not verified) on Fri, 06/22/2007 - 5:38pm.

I have long wondered why the anti-discrimination laws against prejudice based on national origin do not apply to citizens of the United States? Imagine the outrage if there was an explicit policy not to hire Chinese, Indians, Hungarians and the like. I guess Americans must be really, really undesirable, so it is ok.

I had to live through the planning for this abuse at a large aerospace company situated in the Puget Sound area, who planned to "outsource" at least 400 projects just BEFORE 9/11. The only criteria for "outsourcing" was that the vendor could NOT be American, despite the fact my company had the ability to deliver but was unfortunately was American based. Even a Vancouver Canada location less than 150 miles away would have qualified. It was really weird to be part of the process to set up that arrangement.

Shortly afterwards they added the laying of 40,000 almost exclusively American employees while declaring a "skills shortage" to a compliant congress, and my I add, a complicit press. My how ironic.

Oh yes, there is one other bad thing about American workers for which they deserved to be barred from coming through the door, except in the tiniest of numbers. They tend to be nervous about violating export controls laws and have this nasty national loyalty thing that gets in the way of unfettered "global business". Why worry about mere American law, when to get around it you can export jobs or just hire non-nationals to work locally who don't care and can be controlled without even the cost of giving a call to Tony? [No national offense meant to Italians, just Americans.]

BTW, I am not a xenophobe, I have dual nationality, and yes, there are legal ways to immigrate to this country. To say otherwise, especially for educated people with real skills, is disingenuous. The H-1B visa is bad policy precisely because it creates a class of people who do not plan to become a part of the nation. It is unprecedented immigration policy to have a group of people who not only do not plan to become citizens , but rather ultimately seek to take jobs out of the country. This is not “free trade”, it is stupid trade

REALLY WEIRD??

0
By Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 06/28/2007 - 2:45pm.

In your post, you state: "It was really weird to be part of the process to set up that arrangement." NOW you are as upset as the rest of us about what is happening to our middle class. However, it is apparent that you contributed to the problem...by doing NOTHING to stop it, only watching it happen at your company!

I think that it was much more than "really weird". It was un-American and should be illegal! Why didn't you report this plan to some federal agency at the time? Obviously, you wanted to keep your job. I acknowledge that you are a dual-national, yet I presume that you are profitting from this country, therefore, that you should have felt SOME sense of gratitude to our people.

Unfortunately, most people - even natives - would react in the same way, which is why America is doomed. We have become too complacent, too interested in our own individual benefits to stand up and say "NO!" when we see an injustice being perpetrated against our country.

Unless our young adults have more backbone then might be believed (because most have been so terribly indulged throughout childhood and do not appreciate their freedoms), there is no hope for America's future. I'm afraid that radical change would be necessary if there is to be hope because the political process is so corrupt. All politicians can do is talk, talk, talk...and collect a few more pensions and bribes! At the very least, we need a THIRD political party to break the deadlocks between the GOPpies and Democraps. But I am afraid that the middle class will eventually be pushed into a Second American Revolution.

Skills

0
By Lee Slaughter (not verified) on Wed, 06/27/2007 - 2:54am.

I could not agree more. What you describe is not confined to the US market. The same thing happens over here in the UK. The importation of cheap labour and skills as individuals or outsource arrangements as a pretext to filling the skills gap, whilst really being politically motivated social and economic engineering, lowering wages.
The law should be chnaged.

Treason in plain sight

0
By concerned american citizen (not verified) on Thu, 06/28/2007 - 3:30pm.

What serious reform? The One could round up over a 1,000 illegals a day and still NOT put a dent into the over 30+ million here. Not to mention the so-called "Reform" bill that somehow by the grace of God himself, got knocked down.

It would have granted the illegals more than amneisty, they would have got in a sense of the word, a "Full Pardon" let alone allow them to bring in 10-11 of their realitves, you do the rest of the math and see how many get to get in here. Tell me any american citizen that got a break on their taxes? also it would allow fellons and child molesters in as well. Another aspect of the bill would have let obsconders in, (try doing that here and see if the swat teams don't shoot you !!! )

They come here making demeands where they aren't even lawful citizens of this country.When those demeands are brought forth to the dockett on behalf of lobbiests of which only similarizes their own conditions that they're trying to escape from. Then when conditions worsen, they have to guts to complain about it and the newer illegals that come in here when they're illegals themselves!!!

You know as well as I do, that "Corporate Policy" is going to prevent that. They're going to go for the lowest cost possible in order to keep the $$$$ in their pockets and to heck with everyone else.

It is nothing more than a design to destroy this country. But for the guy in the video, being a lawyer of all occupations- Him, his staff and corporation should be tried and held accountable on treason charges!!!!

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