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Comment by dchichkov | Hacker News Reader

I've encountered H1-B fraud once, in an unscrupulous YC startup once, regretfully.

After getting their way to YC, the founders hired two fresh H1s from India, with no internal advertisement [that's not legal]. That resulted in a significant change in negotiating power with early employees. The company went from 33% Indian into 100% Indian in 3 months.

Tried reporting this as an ethics violation to YC, no one cared. Didn't bother to report to INS, that would have caused problems to the hires and they were not the ones responsible for lies and fraud.

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You should have filed form WH-4 [1] with the Wage and Hour division of the Department of Labor to report the violation. That could have stopped the employer from exploiting other foreign workers.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/forms/wh4

People are in a choke-hold with this. You can be tarred as a ‘racist’ for pointing out such illegal and opportunistic practices.

Claims of the fraud must be made with seriousness. Not posting internal advertisement at max is a minor technical violation but how did you verify it was not posted? Perhaps it was posted in the common areas as such.

I am much more sympathetic to Indian immigrants as they are subject to 150 year long green card queue, which in itself has enabled such ill treatment of these people coupled with the generic garden variety racism.

H1b must be abolished and simply hand over a green card to any employee who has been employed for more than 5 years.

I don't think it was caused by bad intent. But a combination of VC money, pressure to execute and not having awareness of local business code and practices is a sure recipe for violations. It was not an isolated violation. The company had mistreated a local summer intern, among other things.

Luckily, there is some natural limit. In that particular case, after transitioning from a balanced, diverse international team into a mono-culture, the company instantly stopped advancing. There've been no new hires, the product and the company stagnated and an aquihire was arranged at some point.

I am curious, what kind of qualifications the foreign hires had? and what kind of salaries they got?

I always get sponsored visa job offers from Europe but never from US so I am wondering what's the difference.

> with no internal advertisement [that's not legal]

Source?

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62m-h1b-notice

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