Is this a valid concern or some ranting because he's lost his job because he was paid too much?
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A crime against Americans
BY REY DAVID
Special to The Examiner
I HAVE BEEN a software engineer for the past 15 years, and a good one at that. Seven months ago, my company decided to give my job to offshore software outsourcers from India, and I got laid off.
Unemployment has caused me tremendous hardship. Like so many others in the Bay Area, landing a paying job has become a Herculean full-time job, fraught with tedious daily tasks and crushing frustration.
I have come to accept that there would be difficult periods like this during any business cycle. But I was stunned and aggrieved when I observed a crime being perpetrated at a time like this -- an unconscionable crime against hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic IT professionals like me.
Allow me to explain. There are many job ads I come across for which my skills and experience are ideal. The reason I have not successfully landed one is that, according to at least four of the recruiters I asked, there are around 500 applicants for every job opening. That's an astonishing number. With so many applicants, it would be reasonable to assume your chances of succeeding are not very good.
Here is where I first discovered the crime: I noticed a few ads advertised that they sponsor H1-B visas. I found that the companies who sponsor H1-B visas are invariably owned or run by Indians. There are thousands of unemployed IT professionals in the Bay Area who are U.S. residents and desperately looking for work. And here we see some Indian-owned companies who will spend the time, effort and money to bring people in from India to fill their job openings. That is unconscionable!
I thought that there had to be a mistake. This is the United States of America. Surely the authorities would not allow such crimes to take place. To my horror, I learned it has become a common practice for some Indians to set up dummy corporations, create dozens of bogus job openings, sponsor H1-B visas for candidates in India and arrange a temporary home for these "successful candidates."
These candidates pay their "sponsor" a fixed fee for his "services." They then stay with other successful candidates in an arranged home until they find a paying job for themselves with some bona fide American company.
But why would the companies bother to advertise openings to the public when they have no intention of hiring locally? They advertise to satisfy the INS's minimum requirements for H1-B sponsorship.
This despicable practice may explain why there has been exponential growth in the number of Indian IT professionals in the Bay Area.
I am not being discriminatory or racist. I don't care about someone's ethnicity or skin color. What I care about is behavior! And the fact is, people have systematically taken jobs away from deserving Americans right from under our feet.
The problem keeps getting bigger. I observed that when an Indian rose to a position of authority, he would hire Indians whenever possible.
Friends have shared with me that when they succeeded in getting an interview at an Indian-owned company, the interviewer and almost everybody else in the office was Indian.
My friends would feel like the interviewer had no intention of hiring anyone who wasn't Indian. The Indian companies invited non-Indians to interview only for the sake of appearance, and for state Equal Employment Opportunity reporting purposes.
In any case, some enterprising Indians have learned ways around the law to bring Indian nationals here for profit.
Indian professionals who have been brought in here through illicit means are swamping the IT jobs marketplace. It is hurting hardworking, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic Americans like me who are desperately looking for honest work.
And it has got to stop!
Comment: [email protected]
Rey David has been a software engineer for 15 years. He lives in Livermore.
A crime against Americans
----------------------------------
A crime against Americans
BY REY DAVID
Special to The Examiner
I HAVE BEEN a software engineer for the past 15 years, and a good one at that. Seven months ago, my company decided to give my job to offshore software outsourcers from India, and I got laid off.
Unemployment has caused me tremendous hardship. Like so many others in the Bay Area, landing a paying job has become a Herculean full-time job, fraught with tedious daily tasks and crushing frustration.
I have come to accept that there would be difficult periods like this during any business cycle. But I was stunned and aggrieved when I observed a crime being perpetrated at a time like this -- an unconscionable crime against hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic IT professionals like me.
Allow me to explain. There are many job ads I come across for which my skills and experience are ideal. The reason I have not successfully landed one is that, according to at least four of the recruiters I asked, there are around 500 applicants for every job opening. That's an astonishing number. With so many applicants, it would be reasonable to assume your chances of succeeding are not very good.
Here is where I first discovered the crime: I noticed a few ads advertised that they sponsor H1-B visas. I found that the companies who sponsor H1-B visas are invariably owned or run by Indians. There are thousands of unemployed IT professionals in the Bay Area who are U.S. residents and desperately looking for work. And here we see some Indian-owned companies who will spend the time, effort and money to bring people in from India to fill their job openings. That is unconscionable!
I thought that there had to be a mistake. This is the United States of America. Surely the authorities would not allow such crimes to take place. To my horror, I learned it has become a common practice for some Indians to set up dummy corporations, create dozens of bogus job openings, sponsor H1-B visas for candidates in India and arrange a temporary home for these "successful candidates."
These candidates pay their "sponsor" a fixed fee for his "services." They then stay with other successful candidates in an arranged home until they find a paying job for themselves with some bona fide American company.
But why would the companies bother to advertise openings to the public when they have no intention of hiring locally? They advertise to satisfy the INS's minimum requirements for H1-B sponsorship.
This despicable practice may explain why there has been exponential growth in the number of Indian IT professionals in the Bay Area.
I am not being discriminatory or racist. I don't care about someone's ethnicity or skin color. What I care about is behavior! And the fact is, people have systematically taken jobs away from deserving Americans right from under our feet.
The problem keeps getting bigger. I observed that when an Indian rose to a position of authority, he would hire Indians whenever possible.
Friends have shared with me that when they succeeded in getting an interview at an Indian-owned company, the interviewer and almost everybody else in the office was Indian.
My friends would feel like the interviewer had no intention of hiring anyone who wasn't Indian. The Indian companies invited non-Indians to interview only for the sake of appearance, and for state Equal Employment Opportunity reporting purposes.
In any case, some enterprising Indians have learned ways around the law to bring Indian nationals here for profit.
Indian professionals who have been brought in here through illicit means are swamping the IT jobs marketplace. It is hurting hardworking, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic Americans like me who are desperately looking for honest work.
And it has got to stop!
Comment: [email protected]
Rey David has been a software engineer for 15 years. He lives in Livermore.
A crime against Americans
Comment