H-1B fraud consultancies grow, with application abuse openly discussed online H-1B visa fraud is rampant and growing, and the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has yet to demonstrate that it can deal with the situation. "The H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability," the …
Ah, the good old USA. Where Kindereggs are banned to protect children, school busses have lights to protect children, but AR-15's are given out like candy.
Kudos to The Reg for this: "How do you solve a problem like a visa? How do you catch a fraud and bring it down?"
Someone deserves a raise or at least a trip to an Austrian mountain top.
I have been working in high tech for almost 40 years. I have only come across one time when H1B visa hiring was truely due to a lack of qualified applicants. The field was Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) in the early '90's. The US produced maybe 2 PhD's a year in that field at that time. I hired a bunch of Russians to fill the void. Every other place, including my present employer, uses H1B visas to hire at below market wages folks who are of low risk of leaving.
Nobody said that all of those people were of the same skill. You'll get a lot of variation. However, to answer your question, one thing that the US has and India doesn't (as much) is a bunch of people with money. That includes the following:
1. Investors who want to invest a large quantity of money in speculative businesses.
2. Customers who can spend comparatively large amounts of money on products and services which can make some of those companies profitable.
3. Companies that have lots of money to put into R&D innovation budgets.
India has people with money, but when scaled up to the size of the country, they have much less of it. They still have large chunks of the country where electricity isn't on all day, which you won't find so often in many other countries, which limits the funding available from the general public. You can get a lot of investment from particularly rich companies or individuals in India as well, but you have fewer of them interested in doing so. That's not the only issue, but it is a rather big one if you're looking for a lot of innovation.
>> Nobody said that all of those people were of the same skill. You'll get a lot of variation. However, to answer your question, one thing that the US has and India doesn't (as much) is a bunch of people with money.
That's an overly simplistic view.
>> 1. Investors who want to invest a large quantity of money in speculative businesses.
While most startup investors are in the US, they actually invest all around the globe (even in India).
>> 2. Customers who can spend comparatively large amounts of money on products and services which can make some of those companies profitable.
Hardly any consumer facing business today is located where its customers are, unless it's a services business. For physical goods, global distribution has been a thing for a while (which is why the West is able to make so many thing in China). And for online services the location of the business and its servers hardly matters at all.
That also ignores that B2C is only on part of what business do, and tends to me much smaller than B2B (Business to Business). Which works somewhat differently than B2C.
>> 3. Companies that have lots of money to put into R&D innovation budgets.
As with consumer products, R&D is usually located where the talent is, not the company's customers. So if India had a huge pool of world-class talent then research centers would be located there, rather than in the US, Europe or Israel.
The reality is that India, which has an education system that's considered near the bottom on a global scale and which has been designed to manufacture inflated or fake degrees so Indians can fill up roles abroad, mostly through the many large Indian outsourcers such as Tata, which bring them to the US via the H1B route to do mostly menial work instead of the high-skilled jobs H1B was created for.
"While most startup investors are in the US, they actually invest all around the globe (even in India)."
They are, but not always at the same level. Pitching a startup to investors often involves a lot of completely subjective marketing to specific investors, who don't go on tour. That makes it easier for people who either live close to the investors or can easily afford to go visit them rather than those who only do a few online meetings. Investors will lend to people in a variety of countries, but not equally. In addition, I did say that there are other factors, and some of them affect investors' willingness to invest in India-based companies. Trade restrictions, worries about local economic conditions, and concerns about local markets (which you also mentioned, so I'll come to that) are considered by investors and all involve the location.
"Hardly any consumer facing business today is located where its customers are, unless it's a services business."
A lot of large tech companies are services businesses, and they tend to offer their service first in the country in which they're formed and expand from there. That's also true with B2B services, although there are some which wouldn't necessarily work as clearly. Even for goods, although they can be designed and manufactured basically anywhere, they are often sold first in a country in which the company has built a local presence, either their original one or a developed subsidiary which is responsible for marketing, distribution, and support including repairs.
"As with consumer products, R&D is usually located where the talent is, not the company's customers."
I must disagree with the first part of that. R&D tends to be wherever the company wants it to be, which for old and large companies is likely to be wherever they already had it. Apple, for example, does R&D in a number of places, but it still brings a lot of people to Cupertino because that's where they have been working for a long time and they've gotten used to putting stuff there. Several large companies have R&D centers in India, for example, Google has four of them, the largest of which is a facility in Hyderabad which is supposed to hold about 13,000 people. Other companies may just prefer to move their engineers to the place they already did it, and the engineers may also appreciate that.
>> If there are 780,000 Indians with advanced degrees seeking work in the US - why is India not the current center of tech innovation?
Probably because Indians know their "advanced degrees" are worthless:
https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2023/04/19/bloomberg-india-producing-graduates-with-worthless-degree/
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3123929/indias-fake-degrees-hundreds-singapore-malaysia-us-canada-left
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The whole Indian education system has been designed around manufacturing degrees to feed the Indian outsourcing industry. Which happens to be India's most successful export business.
Based on the observations of my father who was working in the region some decades ago its a a very free wheeling, entrepreneurial society. In particular, if someone needs a piece of paper for some official purpose or another then there's any number of enterprises who will provide it for you for a fee.
Systems are there to be worked.
a bit like the indian Driving test. drive 100 feet and stop the car. fail if you go to far as the examiner has further to walk back to the test centre. issued 1 international driving licence. I am always sceptical of overseas degrees from certain schools, generally correspondence type. Pay 10000 (insert currency ) get your degree, no prior education required ???????
I read about this solution elsewhere that is great for US workers...
Blind auction system.
US corps argue they NEED H1B to fill jobs in the US due to a lack of applicants...
BS. They have a lack of applicants willing to work for under market wages at the whim of their employer who can deport them.
So to fix this, you make US companies bid against each other in a Blind auction system. They would have to bid for open H1B slots. If a company truly could not find an AI engineer in the US for $300k... Shouldn't they be willing to $200k down to ensure they get a visa slot?
Like conservatives love to spew, Let the market decide!
This would incentivize companies to look harder onshore, but if they truly needed offshore help they could pay to secure it over a company just looking to underpay skilled labor.
That's not a fix, all it does is pushing out genuine visa needs by businesses that require skilled workers to sustain their US business. Because while the majority of H1B visas go to disguised cheap labor workers like those from India, there still are many businesses with genuine needs to hire abroad because a suitably qualified US worker can't be found (often enough a qualified American might exist but is not willing to relocate). And because how the H1B system is structured, these businesses suffer because they are often pushed out of the H1B contingent by Tata & Co (who snap up the majority of visas when they become available, often by using fake jobs and "double booking").
Work visas as lottery or bid system has always been a truly stupid idea. Visa assignments should be determined solely by actual needs, and where the needs exists then the visas should be available - whatever the number.
To fix H1B, the lottery and the slot system based on a limited number of visa slots has to go. H1B visas should be granted based on a specific role (requiring skills and experience at U.S. Bachelor level or equivalent) that the worker will perform, the actual skills/experience of the particular worker, and a valid justification why a suitably qualified American worker can't be found.
There also must be much more stringent checks and enforcement, and very harsh penalties for those that abuse the system. And considering that 3rd world countries aren't exactly renowned for their excellence in education, hiring from 3rd world countries should trigger additional checks (such as whether the to be hired worker can show education comparable to US institutions, i.e. from 1st world institutions).
This way genuine needs could be filled without risking Americans being replaced by cheap Indian labor.
《...workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability," .... "A specialty occupation is one that requires the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent."》
The picture of a fashion model holding a PhD in Quantum Computing who can throw the the kets (|0>) around as she might her bras (<1|) is worth a smile and I suspect a giggle from the likes of our Elle.
I hasten to add I rather think modelling takes a lot of hard work and dedication and doubtless requiring a fair bit of intelligence and common sense which in my experience are normally worth more than a doctorate.
The US is a bit like Monty Python's Holy Grail's Camelot:
"ARTHUR: Well, on second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."
I worked for "a major chip manufacturer" 20 years ago. In a large building, there were 3 non-Indians. Most were not engineers. They were doing trivial technician type tasks.
Before you call me a racist, I think the original intent of the H1-B visa program was to bring in the best and the brightest from anywhere on the planet. Heck, Sun Microsystems was started by an Indian Engineer. This created many high paying jobs and kept America at the tech forefront.
But the program has turned into a free-for-all to lower the bottom line at any cost. This does nothing to keep America at the forefront of tech. What a sad state of affairs.
Yup, I remember when I held one at the end of the previous millennium.
Me with whatever advanced degree I had, at the consulate, with pretty much the rest barely out of college.
Was left wondering did the USA not have ANYONE technically qualified.
And there was another company near my US office which I suspect did only this. Body shopping I think we called it. Always used to see fellow countrymen in groups of 4 (always 4 and always men). From what I could see, from a particular state.
Now a days, I read it is openly done.
https://infotechlead.com/bpo/walt-disney-sacks-250-and-asks-them-to-train-indians-as-replacement-30761
"Would-be workers are not supposed to register multiple times"
If only there where a way to uniquely identify an applicant based on, for example, the identifier of a document issued to them by their country which is anyway required for them to have in order to travel to the US!! Then the US could insist on including that identifier in the application paperwork. Then all that would be needed would be to design some sort of wondrous engine that could compare all the identifiers to check for duplicates. Or even better, you could extend the marvelous engine so that it accepts the applications for you, and will automatically reject any applications for which such an identifier already exists!
Of course it would need to be quite a powerful machine if there are all of 700,000+ applicants per year to sort through, however will it ever cope???
Punched card sorters and tabulators are quite fast these days.
Sorting out multiple applications isn't difficult, as you've noted. Software used to register voters and count votes will do this. Everyone does, in fact. It won't work in this case, of course, because the system has already been gamed in that once the employer has a slot for H1B applicant 'A' they can substitute H1B applicant 'B'. The visa slot is tied to the job, not the person.
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