I experienced a bit of the fallout of the H1-B abuse while I was looking for a job in 2005. I worked in IT, and was generally acknowledged as being one of the “best” Novell networking people in the city. Not only was I certified on nearly every one of their products, I was certified to teach Novell’s courses on those products.
So when I was looking for a job, I went to a headhunter and saw that there was an opening for someone who was able to work with all the different products I was certified to teach! I figured it would be a slam dunk.
Of course the headhunter wouldn’t reveal who their client was, but I later learned that to “comply” with the H1-B laws, they will often come up with ridiculous certification requirements that they’ll publish to “ensure” that they can place a foreign worker, since no citizen would have those skills. So, even though I was certified by the manufacturer to teach all those classes, I did not get the job.
Years later I learned that the company that received the foreign worker found him completely inadequate, and they were forced to bring in contractors, who convinced management over a few years to convert completely to Microsoft. I learned that the company that had gone to the headhunter was a company where I had originally set up their networks (switching them over from IBM Lan Manager to Novell,) supported their IT department for a number of years, and even trained many of their network admins!
Had the company known I was available, they would have hired me on the spot, but the headhunter needed to place a foreign worker.
Mark
That was a nice sh!t sammich you had to eat. Sorry to hear that. H-1b is evil.
I've seen and remarked on this as well. It's how the scam is done.
Only a few people are naive enough to believe that H1-B actually means hiring foreigners to fill slots that can't be filled because there are no qualified Americans available. (It's really about pricing the American worker out of the marketplace right here in his own country.)
Unfortunately, all of those naive persons are either in the House or the Senate. One of them has a name that rhymes with "Fred Bruise". (I'll vote for him anyway, but he's dead wrong on this issue.)
That sounds an awful lot like what I went through with one job interview back in the mid-1970s, which was then the heyday of "affirmative action", not for H1B foreign workers but US citizens of "minority" or "disadvantaged" class, which meant mainly women and Afro-Americans. One of the requirements was to take a test in basic logic skills, designing system flow, programming, flow charting, just basic IT stuff. There were like 10-12 of us taking the test, I was the only white dude. I blew through the test in half the time of anyone else, got the highest score. So they changed the test and re-tested everybody. Same result. So they changed it again and re-tested everybody. By now I could see what they were doing, changing the test to get the outcome they wanted (kinda like 'Rats and election recounts). But the same result happened again. Finally they threw in the towel and just told me that while I got the highest scores they were "selecting another applicant" for "other" reasons. I talked to a lawyer and he said I had a case for discrimination, but it would cost me and even if I got the job they'd make my life miserable for causing them the trouble. So I said to hell with it.
Why was it in the headhunter’s interest to place a foreign worker? He gets paid less, if the person he places makes less money. But most headhunters would just want to place someone as soon as possible anyway.
One would assume that if a company hires an H-1B because they can't find an American with that skill set then they should have to demonstrate that the H-1B does meet all the requirements. I say "should" but that would make too much sense and H-1B status being a piece of government legislation then we can immediately conclude that no such requirement exist.