My neighbor had a good job with a local big studio as an accountant. Her entire department was replaced by Indians on H-1b visas. She had to train her replacement as a condition of receiving a small severance.
Posted on 12/30/2024 9:52:53 AM PST by libh8er
Mumbai: The fierce row over Indian immigrants and H-1B visas that’s roiling Donald Trump’s team even before he takes office misses the point and isn’t borne out by data, said Aravind Srinivas, founder of Perplexity AI. Illegal immigration is the real issue, said the IIT graduate who’s worked at DeepMind and OpenAI, and is himself in the US on an H-1B visa.
“Clearly, it surprised everybody online and it's not exactly data driven--the claims that the H-1B or Indian immigrants are taking away the jobs of laid-off American tech workers,” he told ET in an interview. “Indians are also being laid off and honestly, the real problem… is the illegal immigration. That’s what the government needs to cut down on.”
The issue has polarised Trump’s top supporters, with the opposing camps being dubbed MAGA (Make America Great Again) and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head this proposed cost-cutting agency, have spoken out strongly in favour of H-1B visas, while Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer are MAGA supporters who have attacked their opponents, accusing them of being billionaire tech bros with little interest in working for the welfare of the Trump base.
Srinivas said it was unfair to drag Sriram Krishnan, Trump’s pick for AI policy advisor, into the dispute by citing his past tweets supporting H-1B visas and immigration. He’s also expecting tempers to cool down.
“If people actually took a look at the data and saw it for themselves, they wouldn't be this angry,” Srinivas said. “I feel it's going to all settle down. I think we should all feel good about someone as high calibre as Sriram influencing AI policy. People need to understand he has nothing to do with immigration, and stop taking his past tweets out of context”
(Excerpt) Read more at economictimes.indiatimes.com ...
I wonder how those same Indians would feel if IT - or other businesses in their country sought to replace them with White engineers from the U.S. - and made them train their own replacements as a condition of receiving a severance.
I’ll bet they wouldn’t like it one bit...
Another Indian lecturing Americans on why they’re wrong.
“the claims that the H-1B or Indian immigrants are taking away the jobs of laid-off American tech workers”
Hilarious
Been all over the news for three decades
Luv gettin’ gaslighted by Super Scammer
Someone should ask Vivek if India was wise to accept British people coming in the 17th century to just do trade a business that Indians couldn’t do.
Agreed
Importing cheap labor is only making the situation worse by depressing wages and opportunities in the industry.
Also, stripping human capital from developing nations is immoral.
The first H1-B visas in the post-medieval world were slave ships.
You will be shocked how many Americans are working in India in such places as a Bangalore & Hyderabad. My son-in-law, born in Ohio from American parents worked in India for Microsoft.
And competitive labor rates keeps more American outfits in America instead of shipping jobs abroad. Manufacturing creates most wealth in a country and so many manufacturing plants are shuttered in USA. Drive through industrial districts in Chicago to find out.
Also many foreigners on visas working in United States don't have to pay FICA Social Security tax. Do you think they would have an advantage over Americans for hiring employers when the employers don't have to match 7% of their salary into FICA? You bet it does.
To add insult injury they're not subject to the 7 1/2% withholding taxes American citizens are.
Here's a summation of how this works.
Do nonresident aliens have to pay FICA tax?
If you're a nonresident in the US you may be exempt from Social Security and Medicare taxes (FICA).
International students, scholars, teachers, professors, researchers, trainees, physicians, au pairs, summer camp workers, and other non-students on F-1, J-1, M-1, Q-1 or Q-2 visas are entitled to a FICA exemption.
Source https://blog.sprintax.com/fica-tax-explained-nonresidents/
Aravind Srinivas
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Dec 14
@AravSrinivas
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Follow
I think I should get a green card. Wdyt?
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
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Follow
Yes
1:00 AM · Dec 14, 2024
Srinivas’ slippery double talk puts even Bill Clinton to shame.
Nope, as we are learning, from Elon & Vivek broach of the topic, is that the H-1B visa is being run like a lottery, and has nothing to do with meritocracy at all. It is all about cheaper wages, period. Many of the recipients of the H-1B visas have nothing on the American worker, other than lower monetary outlay for wages, and SS taxes are not required to be remitted for them either. These foreign workers are being viewed like indentured servants for the benefit of the owner & perhaps stock holders as well.
They think we are too stupid to know there is a open borders flood of illegals issue AND a issue with too many H1B’s.
Yes they think we are stupid.
Musk was very clear in what he said.
New naturalized citizens, and their minor children, vote 70% Democrat.
Asian Indian Americans are the most Socialist immigrant group in USA History.
80% of Asian Indian Americans voted to reelect Barack Obama in 2012.
78% of Asian Indian Americans voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The 2020 and 2024 numbers are behind a Pay Wall.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/h1b_visa_fraud/
Indentured
The fraud extends beyond gaming the visa lottery.
A source familiar with the Indian IT community in the US – who asked not to be identified out of concern for retribution – described a culture of corruption through which technology consultancies, working with larger firms that turn a blind eye to abuse, exploit the lack of H-1B oversight for financial gain.
“It’s not just that multiple visa applications are put in for one person to obtain a H-1B visa,” our source explained. “Once the visa is obtained, that student then works off the cost of that visa (illegal but more common than not) – usually in a 70/30 split favoring the student at whatever tier they were hired in at. The higher tier you get recruited at, the better off you are with pay. They will also have indentured servant-like debt as the prize for getting to America.”
They will also have indentured servant-like debt as the prize for getting to America
Foreign students studying in the US who didn’t win the visa lottery may play a role in further fraud. We’re told some consultancies tap up foreigners to work for clients illegally using the identities of legit citizens or green card holders.
“That’s where the true scam is and the real money is at,” our source explained. “These people, recent IT grads, will do almost anything to stay in the US and work an IT job. The visa scam is small potatoes compared to what happens to the losers.
“They are offered jobs paying fractions of a dollar, to live with six people in a one bedroom apartment to manage costs. These people number in the thousands each year, compounded over decades.”
“Their job is to impersonate a green card holder or US citizen to receive 30 percent of the pay,” with 70 percent going to the people organizing the fraud, our source continued. “Why? Because it’s still more money than their family back home could dream about.
“The winner is the consultancy … This scam is decades old and is becoming a massive problem in the IT market. And quite frankly, it’s a major national security threat since it’s a large exploitable population with access to sensitive American data.”
These problems extend to other guest worker programs such as the Optional Practical Training (OPT) scheme, which allows foreign students to work in the US for 36 months. In Senate budget committee testimony [PDF] last September, Ronil Hira, an EPI researcher and associate professor in the department of political science at Howard University, described OPT as an unauthorized guest worker program that isn’t policed because Homeland Security insists that it’s merely a training program.
“OPT workers directly compete with, and substitute for, US workers,” argued Hira. “I know at least one worker who unwittingly trained his OPT replacement. When he filed formal complaints to ICE and the Department of Justice, the agencies told him tough luck.”
H-1B fraud consultancies grow, with application abuse openly discussed online
Homeland Security will test out using genAI to train US immigration officers
Supreme Court doesn’t want to hear union’s beef about STEM grad work visas
Uncle Sam probes H-1B abuse surge: What do our vultures make of it?
Then there’s the fraud that happens after the visa selection process, in which IT consultancies for large clients create work for themselves, to boost billable hours. For example, our source recounted an incident from years past involving an individual who worked for a healthcare firm under another green card holder’s name.
“Whenever he wanted overtime, he would just bring down the servers and cause a P0 [high-priority trouble ticket] to come through,” we’re told. “You know, he and his team would get paid. And that meant that they would maybe get like 10 to 12 hours of overtime, all the while knowing how to solve the problem. They created extra income for themselves.”
Our source opined that while IT outsourcing of this sort is supposed to reduce costs, the consultancies providing these services are organized to do the opposite.
“They inflate the cost by doing these types of things, making things more difficult than they need to be. And it’s not like any one person is ever doing it. But it is a culture that is causing it. They’re not trying to actually make things easier, faster, more affordable, more reliable, and so on. They’re just doing whatever will to cause enough roles to be created so the consultancy is warranted.”
But H-1B workers are not limited to just the tech fields. If you remember, Disney workers were being replace by H=1b workers as well.
Also, having met numerous Indian workers in the tech field, they are not all dark, there are many of them who have very light colored skinned that could be viewed as white.
Lastly, not all come from India, because there is also a percentage limitation also allowed by their nationality.
It really is a scam whose real purpose is to layout less in wages for companies. Meritocracy is not a factor at all. If it were the H-1B visas wouldn't be handed out based upon a lottery like system. The luck of the draw
we need more of this.
H-1B visa scam: 3 Indian-origin men face 10 years in US for fake job offers
All that is true but the trend is changing. There was a shift toward Trump in 2020 and a significant shift in 2024.
My neighbor had a good job with a local big studio as an accountant. Her entire department was replaced by Indians on H-1b visas. She had to train her replacement as a condition of receiving a small severance.
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