Jury finds Cognizant discriminated against US workers
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Talking to many friends over years having been through it to come here, I view it a bit like old (like 18th century old) indentured servitude of Europeans trying to get to the US however possible that they'd sell themselves into contractual slavery as "indentured servitude". It was later stopped, but for a time it was a good deal for everyone involved, wink wink. The slaver/outsourcer got cheap labor showing up to sign away, now a captive workforce, all to get shipped off to the promised land with the hope the poor bastard can pay off the debt working for nothing near what the slaver/outsourcer gets, all while waiting on an immigration list that may never happen.
It's all better than anything they'll get in their home land, so they'll bet big and do anything just to get to the US to drop an anchor kid to force naturalization. Same(ish) game from 200-some years ago, just with a modern progressive spin and abuse of terrible government regimes.
The other scam is they run them through Canada for quicker immigration than US, and then just move to the US as Canadian citizens faster than waiting on a direct list to the US. Anything for that Murican dream and soaking up Murican dollars.
Now with this despotic regime for 2025, we'll see how immigration works out, but all the slavers pay big lobbies, so they'll keep on keeping on for sure.
I've always wondered why the US didn't change this law (to right of blood)? The current approach was created when the US was just a colony and needed a quick injection of people. Now it doesn't make much sense and creates a plethora of problems as I understand.
Because that is enshrined in the Constitution [1] and amendments are very very rare to happen [2] even in a time when politicians were actually interested in running the country vs just "owning" the opposing side.
And there's many things that more desperately need constitutional reform than getting rid of "anchor babies" - FPTP, Electoral College, executive orders, or actually enforce the separation between state and religion to name a few.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14-S1-1-1...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Cons...
It wasn’t, though. There were no immigration limits and those immigrants could come to the Americas freely. They just couldn’t afford the trip due to the extreme poverty in England.
In the 1740s one way trip to America cost around £8. An entirely unskilled laborer could hope to make at least £10-15 per year in England and about double that in Massachusetts.
The standard contract for indentured servitude was 4-6 years. That is an extremely bad and exploitative deal. About 40% APR especially considering that the maximum legally allowed interest rate on loans was 5% (which might have been a part of the problem; if 20% loans were legal maybe someone would have offered them to immigrants).
However unfortunately with no disposable income and no credit facilities you didn’t really have a choice so in that sense working for food and board for 5 years and possibly getting some land afterwards (though it became somewhat uncommon by the 1700s unless you wanted to move to the frontier) might not have been such a bad deal.
If they'd just keep their non-Indian workers happy, they could've, in all likelihood, continued abusing the H1B program forever.
This doesn’t work the way many assume. Yes, it’s true, the kid ends up a citizen by birth. But the kid can’t sponsor the parent for permanent residence until the kid is 21 years old, there are financial requirements the kid has to meet as a sponsor, processing the application still takes at least at least a year or two after that, citizenship takes additional years (usually 5 or more), and there are many reasons why either permanent residence or citizenship can be denied.
Everything in the previous sentence assumes the laws on this topic aren’t tightened further in the next couple of decades, which they very well might be.
Maybe the parent simply has a goal to ensure that their kid has the opportunities that come with US citizenship. That part does work. And sure, I say fair enough, especially in the context we’re discussing where the parent is coming and working and paying taxes. But having a kid in the US is in no way a quick, easy, or guaranteed path to naturalization for the parent.
Although they can't deport the child, most parents would still bring the child with them if they're being deported in the interest of being able to continue to act as the child's parents, unless the government makes no effort to enable that kind of family unity to be possible during the deportation process, or unless there's a trusted close relative in the US who can give the child a sufficiently better life apart from their parents than whatever mess the parents might be returning to in their country of origin to outweigh the family separation.
I'd love to see stats if you have them regarding cases where a deportation would leave a US citizen kid with no parents who continue to reside in the US and where the government offers to let the parents choose to bring their US citizen kids with them during the deportation at government expense. (Parents in this situation often couldn't afford to reimburse the government for such costs.) Family law generally allows parents to bring their kids with them (below age 18) regardless of the kids' citizenship, at least if no parent is arguing in court for a different outcome.
My expectation is that most parents given that option would choose to keep their kids with them, and that any resulting family separation which wouldn't already exist without a US citizen kid is simply because the government isn't prioritizing family unity in this context.
Meanwhile the debate surrounding it always devolves into "pro immigration" and "anti immigration" with the same generic talking points and all of the actual substance is lost.
Luckily, once you're in the voting booth, you don't need to argue with someone to vote: all you need to do is make your marks and hand in the paper.
While my personal experience is affected by being in the SF Bay Area for the past couple of decades, it is my experience that over those decades the overwhelming majority of accusations of racism in ordinary conversation are not invoked because of racism, but are used as a shorthand for "Fuck you, I'm done with this conversation and done with YOU.".
Because if anything, the sweatshops are even more exploitative towards (majorly) Indians than locals in whichever place they decided suck dry.
Some stuff about wanting to highly restrict these programs:
https://www.rnlawgroup.com/project-2025-and-work-based-immig...
https://www.murthy.com/2024/07/29/how-project-2025-could-imp...
Does he actually have some evidence they're planning on doing that, and have plausible plans to execute it, or is it the typical hyperbolic fear-mongering from Trump's opponents? Retroactively revoking the citizenship of every H1-B who went on to get naturalized (after probably a 10 year process and relying on the law as universally understood at the time), sounds like utter nonsense that probably hasn't been seriously proposed and would go nowhere if it was.
> and this is a part of the Chevron Deference ruling
Do you have any idea what the Chevron Deference ruling was? IIRC, it only says the courts have to make their own interpretation when a regulatory law is ambiguous, rather than always deferring to the interpretation of an executive agency. I don't think it means "all these regs are null and void now, kthxbye."
Biden dismantled the unit, and part of Project 2025 is reimplementing it.
> typical hyperbolic fear-mongering from Trump's opponents
Let me be clear. There is nothing hyperbolic about Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent Republican think tank, is spearheading it. Hundreds of high-ranking politicians and corporate executives are on board with it. The entire administration is going to push for it, systematically, and get as far as they can. It behooves you to study Project 2025 [1] and understand just how bad the next 4 years can be.
Obligatory preface, before it derails my message, the Biden/Harris machine is also anti-democratic, but with a particular neoliberal flavor, while Project 2025 is a largely domestic coup, with sweeping support across the GOP, in a time where Republicans have control of the Legislative branch, Judicial branch and soon, Executive branch. And once Trump begins mass-replacing government workers with sympathizers, there will be little any of us can really do about it.
[0] https://immpolicytracking.org/media/documents/ACLU_Fact_Shee...
That sounds nothing like "declaring anyone that subsequently went on to be naturalized while living here under these [H1-B] and other programs to have their citizenship revoked." It's more like hyper-strict enforcement of existing law, about making material false statements on a naturalization application.
No that's not at all "exactly it." Do you realize you're moving the goalposts?
Looking for flaws in an applications according to existing critera is totally different than somehow retroactively declaring the previous regulations were invalid and screwing everyone who relied on them by revoking their naturalization.
> where Chevron comes in, that a lot of these norms are rules within departments where such things can be evaluated
Chevron says if there's a controversy over those things, a court needs to resolve it without giving total deference to the department. It doesn't say those "norms are rules" must be struck down, it just says a court will decided if they're following the law.
> but Project 2025 says if it isn't a law or statute then it doesn't matter, and that includes any concept of a person living here but not a full, naturalized citizen.
You seem to be saying here that there's no law or statute that allows for any state besides "full, naturalized citizen," and that's just so totally not true that it's bonkers you're claiming it.
How about admitting you could be wrong? You repeated an unbelievable claim, and so far have failed to support it. The best you seem to be able to do is come up with something superficially similar without realizing the difference.
And I don't think you invented the claim. There's an entire fever swap producing and promulgating fear fantasies like it. The mechanism seems to be: assume the worst, make some hyperbolic speculation, someone repeats that speculation as something that's really planned, rinse, repeat.
> Go dig through Jamelle's videos
That's a totally unreasonable request.
And if the quota is met, that is fine. The program exists primarily to satisfy talent demand.
US employers have much to win delaying the green card process to have more leverage on the employee.
Are you perhaps relying on a number that has been inflated by relatively-recent staffing shortages?
The successful green card holders you mention are those who came in early (in the 2000s and 2010s) and got through before the situation became so crazy. Or, in some cases, O1-holders.
> 132 years is the waitlist now.
with this:
> Getting an employment-based green card normally takes a few years. ... But the real issue for immigrants from India (and to a lesser extent from China, Mexico, and Philippines) is the 7% country cap. Those who qualify for EB-1 can skip the line and get their green cards in a semi-reasonable time. Those in EB-2 and lower priority categories are out of luck.
I'm pretty sure that I've never worked with someone on a work visa who's legitimately an EB-1 [0], so everyone I've seen get permanent citizenship has been either an EB-2 [1] or (more likely) an EB-3 [2].
> The successful green card holders you mention are those who came in early (in the 2000s and 2010s).
It's strange (and borderline manipulative) to call "Getting their green card in 2019" "coming in early".
Anyway. Given that it seems the major cause for the lengthy wait (whether or not it's actually rising to 200 years) is per-country quotas (rather than staffing problems), the wait seems totally reasonable to me. Plus, with many US-based BigCos hiring assloads of Indian nationals situated physically in India, it strikes me that this concern about green cards is less relevant than in decades past.
[0] <https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent...>
[1] <https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent...>
[2] <https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent...>
And to slow down the application process, increase fees and force people to rely on premium processing more.
6 years = H1B + 1 renewal
Every system will be gamed. The ones gaming the system often stand to gain more than those the system is intended for. A visa program for skilled/talented individuals is supposed to select people who could find good opportunities elsewhere. Getting a job in the US is not a big deal for them. On the other hand, an average person who somehow manages to qualify could improve their life greatly by coming to the US. Especially if they are from a developing country.
If you add bureaucratic requirements to the visa process, make it last longer, and make it less predictable, you are effectively telling the skilled and talented people to go elsewhere. Then you get more people trying to game the system and hoping for a lucky win.
Isn’t this the false argument that tech companies have been making for decades?
“Imagine all the highly talented people that companies will miss out on if we don’t have this program?“ meanwhile, the vast majority of the people being hired are average developers, many of whom are less qualified and talented than the locals. The only major distinction is the salary and now that the programs been so rampant for so long, enough of the H1B path employees are in the system that they control the hiring.
The answer is supposed to be simple. When a law no longer fulfills its purpose, you change the law. Then the abusers will have a new system to game, and they will be less successful for a while. But that doesn't happen in the US, because the Congress has long been unable or unwilling to do its job.
H-1B works pretty well for the academia. The government trusts that academic recruitment processes are competitive and reasonably meritocratic. But it has much less trust in the industry. That's why H-1B petitions from the industry are subject to the cap and the lottery, while petitions from the academia are not.
The simple solution is to remove the employer lock-in, so once an immigrant gets in, they have 6-7 years to job hop. If an employer truly needs foreign talent that it can't get locally, they'd have to have competitive compensation and working conditions. If they don't, they just wasted the sponsorship fees. I don't think there's a way they could effectively game that (especially if you also ban contracts where the immigrant has to repay the sponsor if they job hop).
The fact that the H1B program hasn't been reformed in this way, tells me its real purpose (at least nowadays) is to provide a source of cheaper labor to undercut American workers.
Let the programs continue but consider assessing a hefty fee to those requesting such individuals that replaces all forgone salary adjusted to current day dollars for all citizens impacted - from 2003 onwards up to current day (and beyond) no strings or taxes attached.
If we really want the people, the firms will have no problem paying for the damage, much like how externality costs are assessed.
Instead the country sticks to something that was passed TWO DECADES AGO without bothering to make even hygiene changes. Downright amazing, if you ask me. Even the primitive socialist governments of failed states aren't this complacent with macroeconomic controls.
Also the workers on a visa make can be deported if they lose their job. That makes them dependent on their employer to stay in the US. That makes the visa holders less likely to ask for wages at the going rate or to vote with their feet to go to another company that would treat and pay them better. How is that not discrimination?
Local teams hired or acquired are also part of the dog&pony show, H-1B and similar visa deals are used to keep some of the "middle" and up workers on a leash.
The playbook is so prevalent I'd argue it extends to anything publicly traded.
I've seen shitty expense cutting in many publicly traded companies, but there's like this chasm between the norm and industrial grade bullshit.
Usually outside of WITCH or directly WITCH-influenced places (because let's be honest, nobody works in isolation, so the same managerial styles percolate as people move through companies), you don't see being sent people that leave you with feeling that the only qualification they had was that they should speak english according to census data. Even the one polish company that is infamous for trying to repeat similar "success" at least churns and burns mostly CS students (its late founder had a saying that you can replace any specialist with bounded count of undergrads, and that the number is usually 1).
And I don't say it to be mean about the people - they might be highly skilled in other areas, it's that the company has policy of not training them nor supporting them while they churn through them at lowest possible cost, below what I'd call the thermocline of disbelief and shame - disbelief that other company sent someone so unprepared, and shame of the managers who run operations like that.
It's one thing for your typical consulting public company to promise the stars then non deliver, hell I have heard first hand from Accenture exec about problems at intersection of sales, being able to tell customer no, and what is actually deliverable.
But there's a definite difference in degree when the "team" that you supposedly paid for is swapped the instant the ink is dry, only when contract is at risk of dissolution for bad performane slipping in someone who does not require being sent a document that has every mouse click one after another documented in screenshots.
All of my recent experience has been SRE work - in these businesses, it's just as you describe. Bait/switch opportunities abound with operations work. Even non-tech companies require this kind of 'help'
It's industrialized, become a product itself. Insidious. Going to a vendor to help you do something you already have the staff for, yet putting gloves on everyone involved. It's endlessly frustrating!
+100, none of this is with malice to the individuals. Just... systems thinking, is all. Terrible feedback loops all around :/
There is a meme that the people you want in DCOPs are the exact types you lament RE: qualifications. Their wet dream is a warm body. Language isn't a requirement; we can translate (or even mechanically rehearse) the runbooks.
The thing is, turning a warm body into useful employee is, depending on task, not hard. But the experience dealing with WiPro, TCS, Infosys, and experience of others with Cognizant and HCL added to that, suggests that they don't even try, put KPIs that are in opposition with "useful service", and then lie to everyone including the employee. Like, at least someone employed to tell you why it doesn't matter you paid for your policy for years, it's not going to pay out, at least knows they are there to screw customers.
I can get useful junior data center operator out of a reasonably healthy warm body that I can communicate with (and there's at least one memorable time where we achieved success in remote hands case without mutually intelligible communications while over the phone), but that's like few levels above what I expect from WITCH and their ilk (because yes, other companies in areas dominated by them will end up hiring people from them with certain set behaviours who will then manage their groups in same way...)
The body is regularly an 'accountability sink' (forgive likely abuse of the term). Sure, they can be made to do the job. They often don't [prepare or participate]. Hell, they have a robot to meet the requirement of posting a reply within a certain timeframe. It's a charade
I guess, most simply, I don't find them considerably worse as consultants than those who they consult for. I have yet to find a job where people - or whole departments/subsidiaries - don't behave as you describe. Truly constant.
Anyone who works for a company being acquired by EIG knows what's about to happen: set phasers to 'screw customers'. Along the lines of "Sorry, your shared hosting account includes five processes. Googlebot keeps you suspended by trying for 100." This stuff is commonplace/systemic, available to be seen by those so inclined.
Considering the gaps between knowing, admitting, or simply perpetuating... I don't think it's worth figuring out to such detail.