Recently there was lot of news in the media about the displacement of American workers at Disney and Edison and their replacement with workers on H1B visa.
The U.S. government has opened an investigation against two of the India’s biggest IT outsourcing companies (TCS and Infosys) for possible violations of H1B visa rules.
Under the US law, H1B visa users must have specialized training and they can take only those jobs for which the employers could not find a qualified American worker.
However it is alleged that many US companies use the H1B visas to displace American workers and drive down salaries, which is not as per the law.
The power company had recently laid off more than 500 technology workers.Technology workers at Southern California Edison seems unhappy as they end up training their own replacements because of the plan by the utility company to outsource their jobs to two India-based staffing companies and many of the new workers are in the US on H1B visas which was designed to help American businesses fill specialized positions but not to displace American workers.
Similarly 250 Disney employees were laid off and many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on H1B visas brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India.
Questions are being raised about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary H1B visa to place foreign workers in technology jobs in the United States.
H1B visas were introduced in 1990 and the annual cap on them now stands at 65,000 (plus 20,000 for people with master’s degrees). Tech industry in the US want the cap to be raised.
In theory the H1B visa program seems good as it provide a solution for those companies who can’t find the homegrown talent and to bring in workers from overseas whenever there’s a shortage of specialized professionals.
However the question is, if people who are brought from overseas need to be trained by the homegrown talent than are they specialized? and if not isn’t the basic H1B visa rule is violated?
or Are American workers are displaced in this case with H1B visa workers? and if yes again isn’t HIB visa rule violated ? or are Indian companies using H1B visa according to the rules?
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