Comment by sxp
8 hours ago
Note that this appears to be about green cards/permanent residency rather than h1b.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said other companies that would be suspended from the Permanent Labor Certification Program included Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd., Tata, Wipro Ltd., HCL Technologies Ltd., and Capgemini SE. He said there were multiple active federal investigations ongoing into the matter.
It is an open secret that consulting companies (Tata, Infosys, Capgemini, etc.) are abusing the employee sponsored green cards.
But I'm surprised that Microsoft is accused doing it. I was under the impression that Microsoft will sponsor your green card but is still very strict about whom they hire and retain, regardless of immigration status. But maybe that has changed?
Tata, Infosys, HCL, and similar body shops are definitely a different story.
If you’re laying off employees en masse and still processing green cards that in itself is a red flag.
Companies have usually gotten around it saying we r laying off in 1 division but hiring in another. Maybe that hand waving can’t be swept under the rug anymore.
That doesn't feel accurate to me. If you're laying off employees en masse while getting new h1b visas, maybe - but everybody I know who's gotten a green card from tech employment was employed and working for a long time before that process even started.
1 reply →
Not if the category of employees is different. You are assuming all candidates and roles are fungible.
How is it hand waving? It's literally true a large corporation can fire a customer support agent while sponsoring a software engineer, it is not interchangeable talent
12 replies →
I mean in the LLM era you need fewer employees and you need them to be very good to not become 10x bad engineers, so you could be processing green cards for your super stars while having to do layoffs
2 replies →
> are abusing the employee sponsored green cards
As a foreigner: How does this work and what do they do?
For one thing, if you get laid off you only have two weeks to find another job or you need to leave the country. This balance of power is lop sided so the employer can get away with abusing the employee unreported.
10 replies →
The government will take action on this, but not cruise ship visas. This has nothing to do with "explotation" and everything to do with trying to end immigration, even of (or especially of) highly skilled workers.
> trying to end immigration, even of (or especially of) highly skilled workers
No, it's not.
I know plenty of of software engineers, good ones, who can't find work. Businesses which abuse the H1B and Green card programs to import cheaper workers when there is not a shortage of same here, are acting in bad faith and they know it. They are lying that the people they're bringing over are exceptionally skilled, and they are lying that they cannot find similar workers here at any price.
There's not a shortage of workers domestically anywhere in IT. Especially not now. There's a shortage of them willing to work for the shitty wages Amazon, Microsoft, etc. wants to pay those roles. So they hire companies like Infosys etc. to supply them, which they have done for decades by means of lies and fraud.
If they were bringing over truly exceptional individuals, that would be a different story.
To be clear none of this is even a knock on the skill and integrity of these workers they're bringing over. I'm just saying they are very similar to the tons of US-citizen engineers early in their careers who are out of work, and that if we were a real country, we'd prioritize citizens' need for a job above FAANG profits, by saying "Tough shit, pay more if you can't fill a position."
2 replies →
> trying to end immigration, even of (or especially of) highly skilled workers
It is the color of the skin of those workers that matters to this administration, not their skill levels.
As discussed upthread, the PERM process is widely understood to be a farce, so it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if the government has evidence of a Microsoft executive who wrote down that they didn’t want to replace a senior developer with 6 years of tenure. Everyone including JD Vance knows that’s a dumb outcome, but under the PERM regulations, you can only get that guy a visa if you tried and failed to replace him first.
Agreed. It's a farce on all sides. Most companies abuse H1B and PERM. We could reform immigration, by A. only allowing visas for people demonstrably very talented, stealing star performers from other countries instead of just taking bulk new grads. And then B. allowing green cards just on the basis of them paying lots of taxes, advancing in their job, establishing a family, etc. Because yes! Of course it's good for the American company to keep the tenured developer who has established themselves here!
But of course Congress is inhabited by people with the maturity level of children, so one party wants us to admit anyone who doesn't like their home country, and the other party mainly just wants to impress Trump, so no one will work on or negotiate on serious policy proposals.
From where is MS’ CEO now again?
It's an open secret that the US administration uses regulatory system for bribes and kickbacks, and no one should take them seriously regarding any rationale.
Not surprising seeing those names, that list of companies are notorious for exploiting H1B too. The main reason it needs stronger enforcement and per country caps/ratios.
Per country bans.
This is an open secret. My dad was an H visa (H1B didn’t exist yet) in an industry that uses a lot of H visas because the job involves recruiting public health experts for projects in foreign countries. He said that companies never advertise these jobs to Americans and will hide the posting in some obscure newspaper or whatever to bypass that requirement of the law.
As someone who had to interface with Cognizant,Infosys for many years while working for the US corporation - GOOD ! They should loose their privileges for H1B.
And Microsoft and Adobe added [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/5cfecbba-69ed-42d0-98fd-3ae019144...
Earlier they included Cloudera and Cognizant.
Indentured servant body shop to perm pipeline, usual suspects.
It's relatively straightforward to transfer a H1B, describing it as indentured servitude has always struck me as hyperbolic.
The situation could be easier, make approved I140s portable and issue an EAD, but you aren't trapped with an employer.
The green card process is not transferable. Once its started the applicant is stuck. I personally saw the company slow roll the process for one of my directs. I kept hassling them to move it along but to no avail. I saw this happen to colleagues at numerous companies.
11 replies →
Maybe a little hyperbolic, but the point is that it adds an additional significant shackle.
If I decide my company treats me like crap, I can apply to any* job in the US that I'm qualified for.
If an H1B feels the same way, they need to search within a smaller subset of jobs that are willing to do that paperwork. Last time I was hiring (2025) we were not open to sponsoring H1Bs or green cards. It's just a lot of extra work and legal expense, and frankly we found plenty of talented developers so we were right to not do it. Tons of employers don't deal with it.
* Note: Adjust this figure down somewhat to reflect the fake job postings that I never had a shot at, because the employer is just pretending to look for domestic candidates to satisfy H1B or PERM requirements.
1 reply →
Same guys who flooded the UK IT market. Can't shed a tear for them.
I mean those Indian firms do abuse the visa system so good riddance
Now, you're going to continue attracting LESS of the top tier talent as you make it clearer and clearer that you don't want them. This is the talent we want most.
Even if you're a laborer, it's quite hard to argue that the absolute pinnacle of the labor pool is dragging down your wages and not increasing total jobs.
If other countries are giving you better alternatives, why bring your talents to the US?
I don't think "top talent" is very well represented in the companies listed above...
It is when you think high salaries = top talent.
2 replies →
> the absolute pinnacle of the labor pool
You can't be saying this in seriousness
most of these places are body shops, pretty much the opposite of “pinnacle of the labour pool”
> you're going to continue attracting LESS of the top tier talent
Just hire them remote overseas. One of the competitive advantages of hybrid organizations is they natively support international teams.
LOL. It's not "top talent" it's "cheap talent" or even just "more talent so the supply is larger and wages go down".
If you're EG a PhD+ and working in a frontier AI lab on cutting edge problems, then fair enough. If you're developer x of 100 writing Java CRUD apps in the finance department of some corporate, you are not.
> Now, you're going to continue attracting LESS of the top tier talent as you make it clearer and clearer that you don't want them. This is the talent we want most.
No. It’s not.
> other companies that would be suspended […] included Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd., Tata, Wipro Ltd., HCL Technologies Ltd., and Capgemini SE.
These companies are D tier talent, at best.
Top talent exists domestically, this is to hold wages down. It’s fine to impair the import conveyor and see what happens. If and when there is a labor shortage or wages spike horrendously (highly unlikely), certainly, we can revisit.
Neoliberalism ignored domestic worker concerns for shareholder returns and corporatism, and an alternative was offered, here we are. It’s a natural experiment we might not otherwise had had the opportunity to run.
You are correct.
It also exists non-domestically...
1 reply →
> wages spike horrendously
Anything but that!
2 replies →
Frankly talent doesn’t matter any more with AI - the skill floor for software has dropped to zero so an average dev now competes with the best devs. Marketing and capital matter way more.
It still matters a bit for architectural direction - but those roles are so few I wouldn’t be concerned as an American.