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by mavelikara 3427 days ago
Reposting my comment from the other thread [1]:

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While TCS, Infosys etc figure prominently in the H-1B debate, I think this new bill does not affect them as much as it is made out to be. The real downside is for staffing firms (popularly known as "desi consulting shops"), mostly run by Indian-Americans.

TCS employs 370K+ employees worldwide and had revenue of $16B+ in 2016. They might have gotten 3K H-1Bs each year. If they know how to run projects staffing 370K employees with 3K H-1Bs per year, they will figure out a way to run it with 500. Also, with that kind of revenue, they will pay the $130K if it comes to that.

H-1Bs, I suspect, have a power law distribution. TCS, Infosys etc top the list of H-1B visas per year, but there is a long tail of companies which get allotted few visas every year. Some of these in the long tail are high tech firms in real need of skill and are the ones paying appropriately for it (AmaFaceGoodSoft etc). But I think the larger cohort are the staffing shops which bend the rules often and pay low.

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[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13534296

1 comments

"desi consulting shops" might even run fake payrolls to bypass(break) the laws. As someone who has seen them closely, it is common practice for them to pay an employee $110K on paper but $60K in real.
Isn't that highly illegal?
Highly illegal and HIGHLY common. When my wife moved here (I uprooted her career because of our marriage), she spoke to a few of these people. It was way easier to get an illegal job, and better green card prospects (don't know why).
> I uprooted her career because of our marriage

This is a huge problem by itself. H-4 EAD after I-140 is not enough because that forces you to stay with your current employer until you get your I-140. If you are going to restrict H-1B to highly skilled immigrants, then H-4 EAD should be eligible for any H-1B holder's spouse regardless of I-140 status. Otherwise you are basically saying "we only welcome highly skilled immigrants that are single"

Things are much better these days with proprietors, HR folks and lawyers of these firms getting jail sentences.
Many of them? I saw a couple in the news, so there is a general push in the right direction I guess.