A US tech company promised its H-1B workers $8,000 a month but paid them $800

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A California-based IT company has come under fire for misusing H-1B visas, underlining the small but worrying phenomenon of hiring foreign talent as cheap white collar labour.

On May 02, the US Department of Labor said it had found Cloudwick Technologies, a California-based IT services company, guilty of severely underpaying its workers hired on the long-term H-1B visas. The verdict was announced after a month-long investigation by the labour department’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD).

“WHD investigators found that the company paid impacted employees well below the wage levels required under the H-1B program based on job skill level, and also made illegal deductions from workers’ salaries,” the labour department said in a press release. “…some of the H-1B employees that Cloudwick brought from India with promised salaries of up to $8,300 (Rs5.5 lakhs) per month instead received as little as $800 net per month.”

Cloudwick Technologies, which provides IT technology modernisation services, among other things, is owned by Indian-American Mani Chhabra and serves clients including Apple, Comcast, Verizon, and Visa.

The US government has now ordered the company to pay $173,044 in back wages to a dozen employees. Cloudwick will also have to hire an independent third-party monitor to help ensure future compliance.

https://qz.com/1268241/h-1b-visa-abuse-a-california-company-promised-its-foreign-workers-8000-and-paid-them-800/?utm_source=quora

 

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Indian body shopping firms are the single greatest abuser of EB immigration to the US. They harm everyone: actually talented Indians (especially scientists, medical doctors, artists, etc), US citizens and LPRs, women in tech, legitimate H1B holders, and I could go on and on. Discrimination against non-Indians in IT is extreme. Once the relatively low-skilled Indian workers enter the managerial positions, they ONLY hire Indians and ONLY H1B holders among them. So even Indian USCs or LPRs are discriminated against.

 

The reason: H1B is extremely limiting and makes workers totally dependent on the employer, thereby restricting their negotiating ability. Combine this with Indian extremely hierarchical social structure and you get docile, low-paid, powerless workers. 

 

Women in managerial positions, especially East Asian women, are treated extremely badly by the Indian H1B workers - they are completely ignored and mocked, even when their position, experience and education levels are way above the imported H1Bs. 

 

This entire Indian IT consultancy industry is a vast immigration scam. It is the elephant in the room of American immigration.