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Comment by jobu | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. I didn't realize the rules around H-1B's replacing American workers was so specific:

"The visas are meant for foreigners with specialized skills to fill discrete positions when Americans with those skills are not available. In the applications large companies must file for the visas, they have to confirm that no American workers will be displaced."

This case with Disney having US citizens train their H-1B replacements is a clear violation, and hopefully there are repercussions for Disney and Cognizant. (And more than just this: "Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, has called for an investigation of the H-1B visa program.")

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I think this is the core of the problem. If H-1B were actually being applied as the law is written, I don't think anyone would have a problem with it, at all. Unfortunately, it appears that the government is doing almost nothing to prevent abuse, probably because of lobbying from tech firms.

You are right, though, the practice of using the visa program to replace existing workers with lower cost alternatives which they must train is clearly not allowed.

Can a lawsuit be brought against the government if it is truly shirking its responsibilities when presented with evidence of broken laws?

I smell a money-making opportunity for an enterprising attorney!

Are you talking about a Citizen Suit [1]?

Naïvely, it sounds like a great candidate for a class action. Any real lawyers want to weigh in?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_suit

There's a common law principle called Sovereign Immunity that generally limits the ability of people to sue their government without the government's consent. Of course, in a lot of places governments have granted consent in some broad ways (the US for torts against employees or where the government had a contract with a private entity, apparently[1]). But IANAL.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity#United_Stat...

It is interesting, because a couple of years ago, I was a hiring manager working through the H-1B process for one of my employees. I had to provide a wealth of documentation on what the needed skill set was, as well as documentation on the job advertisements we had made and interviews conducted.

Maybe on the government side it was all ignored, but the firm we worked with certainly led us through the process with detail and seriousness.

Its not the tech companies lobbying. Its the companies like verizon and disney. Tech companies are feeling the pain of h1-b being oversubscribed. If you need a very specific skill that has a very small talent pool, you're competing against these companies who are doing it just to get cheaper labor. When we look at machine learning with advanced degrees, that pool is probably at 100% employment in the US. Thats what h1b is designed to address. Not filling out an oracle DBA position for under market rates.

A reality I've not seen discussed online, but obvious to Americans I worked with at Qualcomm, is that "not available" can mean "unwilling to relocate to California, because Americans largely realize it's unaffordable and rife with scams to exploit visa-bound foreigners with inflated prices". I got that explanation right from a Qualcomm senior director about 10 years ago, or more. And no American workers are displaced, as those capable of filling the jobs are, sensibly, unwilling to move to California to fill them.

So now the employer is obligated to come to the employees? There's a reason employers tend to be in populated areas with a larger pool of potential employees. You can setup an office in Cheyenne, Wyomong, but if there are only 2 potential people to employ there, it's not particularly efficient.

People have moved for work since.. forever.

California has made its bed by continually passing regulations designed to decrease population density and push up the price of residential real-estate. Now the citizens and businesses of California must lie in that bed.

Where I live, those sorts of decisions are made at the city and county level, not the state level. Is California different?

In the case of California, "c) all of the above" ...

I think this is an example of why people often feel like they're talking "past" each other on this issue. You see this as a matter of employees making unreasonable demands on an employer and acting like they are entitled to a job where they get to dictate the conditions. I see this as an employer claiming that there is a desperate shortage of workers that can't be found at (any price?/market rate?) and needs a special government visa program where they get to bestow residency (and control residency) on would-be immigrants.

What would happen to you or I if we lied to a federal agent?

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