THESE PEOPLE ARRIVE WITH ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION OF EVER
LEAVING.
GO INTO ANY SILICON
VALLEY TO SAN FRANCISCO WELLS FARGO OR BANK OF AMERICA. YOU WILL NOT FIND AN
EMPLOYEE THAT IS NOT CHINESE OR INDIAN. ALL UNDOUBTEDLY VISA PEOPLE.
ANYONE BEEN IN A MOTEL IN CA THAT IS NOT OWNED BY INDIANS
AND WORKED BY ILLEGALS FROM MEXICO THAT CAN’T SAY HELLO IN ENGLISH?
GARLAND, Texas—As this city outside Dallas turned heavily Hispanic over the past decade, its school district hired foreign teachers like Bernardo Montes-Rodríguez, a Colombian, with the promise of a green card.
Now Mr. Montes and dozens of other teachers are uncertain whether they will be able to permanently settle in the U.S., as federal agencies investigate the Garland Independent School District for allegedly exploiting the worker visa program under which they were recruited.
Widely known as a way to bring in tech workers, the H-1B visa program allows employers to hire skilled foreigners for hard-to-fill positionsfrom software engineer to science teacher. And school districts around the country have used them to hire thousands of foreign teachers.
School
District's Use of Worker Visa Program Draws Scrutiny
Texas District
Allegedly Exploited H-1B Program in Recruiting Teachers From Overseas.
· Email
By
Ana Campoy
June 4, 2014 3:09 p.m.
ET
From left, Alfonso
Casares Tafur, Elizabeth Niño de Rivera and Francisco Javier Marcano were hired
with H-1B visas. They are now advocating for the Garland, Texas, school
district to help them stay in the U.S. Cooper Neill for The Wall Street
Journal
GARLAND, Texas—As this
city outside Dallas turned heavily Hispanic over the past decade, its school
district hired foreign teachers like Bernardo Montes-Rodríguez, a Colombian,
with the promise of a green card.
Now Mr. Montes and
dozens of other teachers are uncertain whether they will be able to permanently
settle in the U.S., as federal agencies investigate the Garland Independent
School District for allegedly exploiting the worker visa program under which
they were recruited.
Widely known as a way
to bring in tech workers, the H-1B visa program allows employers to hire
skilled foreigners for hard-to-fill positionsfrom software engineer to science
teacher. And school districts around the country have used them to hire
thousands of foreign teachers.
But the Texas case is
the latest example in a string of alleged misuses of the program in schools.
Since 2001, the U.S. Department of Labor has found more than 2,000 H-1B
violations by individual schools, districts or boards, agency records show. In
contrast, in a single-tech company category—custom computer programming—there
were about 4,300 violations in roughly the same period. The tech sector
traditionally accounts for the biggest number of workers brought in under the
program.
In Garland, a city of
about 234,000 people, school administrators investigating the matter said in
April they discovered that foreign recruits had been hired not to increase the
ranks of Spanish-speaking teachers, as intended, but instead, they allege, to
enrich a rogue district executive and his associates, who charged immigrants
hefty fees for legal and other services.
In a sign the program
was being misused, officials say, the district hired teachers through a
recruitment firm in the Philippines, where Spanish isn't the official language.
They paid $1,000 for an interview with the district's head of human resources,
Victor Leos, and $5,000 if they were hired, the district said. Mr. Leos, who
retired from the district this year, declined to comment for this article.
The U.S. Department of
Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed they are
investigating the case but declined to comment further. The school district is
cooperating with authorities, and says it also is trying to help the foreign
teachers rectify their visa paperwork. About a dozen have visas set to expire
in coming months, including Mr. Montes, 41 years old, who has taught in the
district for seven years.
"I'm feeling
betrayed, taken advantage of," he said.
Many of the foreign
teachers hired in Garland obtained the promised green card, even as they were
allegedly tricked out of thousands of dollars. But it is unclear how many of
the 200 H-1B-visa holders the district still employs will be eligible for
permanent residency, given that they appear to have been hired as part of an
alleged profit-making scheme. Employers sponsoring a foreign worker for a green
card must prove no Americans are qualified for the job.
"We still have to
show the need at the end of the day," Garland Schools Superintendent Bob
Morrison said.
Similar disputes have
led to legal action against other districts around the country. Maryland's
Prince George's County Public Schools was ordered in 2011 to refund $4.2
million to some 1,000 foreign teachers who paid legal fees that should have
been covered by the school system. School officials have said they were unaware
teachers weren't supposed to pay the fees. The district said it would
"fully exhaust all domestic applicant pools" before applying for
foreign teacher visas again.
In Louisiana, a group
of Filipino teachers sued the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and a
recruitment agency in 2010, accusing them of charging them exorbitant fees. The
board and the recruitment agency denied any wrongdoing. A jury found the agency
guilty of not properly disclosing the fees and awarded the teachers $4.5
million. Allegations against the school board were dismissed.
Still, some say H-1B
visas are needed to fill a shortage of specialized teachers. Districts "do
it because they cannot find all the teachers they need in any other way,"
said Mehron Azarmehr, an Austin immigration lawyer.
Others say the visas
are prone to abuse. Districts applying for an H-1B on behalf of a foreign job
applicant only have to attest they couldn't find a suitable U.S. candidate.
That makes it "easy for schools to bring in teachers on temporary visas
whenever they like, but much too difficult to keep them after they have put in
years of dedicated service," said Randi Weingarten, president of the
American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers union.
Garland has filed 642
H-1B applications since 2001. Comparable districts nearby filed fewer than 25
in that time. Several teachers alleged that Mr. Leos promised them the district
would sponsor them for permanent residency if they performed well. Some Garland
hires were directed to rent housing from Mr. Leos's stepson and referred to a
law firm where Mr. Leos's stepdaughter worked, the district said. Abraham Yu,
an executive at the firm, denied any wrongdoing. The stepdaughter and stepson
couldn't be reached for comment.
The alleged misuse of
the visa program has also raised concerns that some American teachers may have
been pushed out to make room for fee-paying foreign teachers.
"They've harmed a
lot of people, not just the foreign teachers," said one former educator,
Delaina Sims.
The district has found
no evidence of that, according to its lawyer. Mr. Morrison, the district
superintendent, said it has taken measures to ensure visas aren't mishandled
again.
THE ENTIRE BASIS OF AMNESTY IS TO KEEP WAGES
DEPRESSED.
“Tech tycoons like Larry Ellison and Mark
Zuckerberg have gotten rich while wages in the technology sector have
stagnated.”
Tech firms fight hiring rules in immigration bill
Tech firms fight hiring rules in immigration bill
Americans
would "be shocked to know that most of the H-1B visas … are going to
outsourcing companies," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said during a recent
hearing.
America… NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!
One-way trips to U. S. frustrate immigration authorities
An estimated 4.4 million people entered the country on
legal visas and have never left. Officials often have no way of knowing whether
they do.
Silicon Valley Poverty Is Often Ignored By The Tech Hub's Elite
TECH
GIANT APPLE COMPUTER SAYS HELL NO TO PAYING TAXES and HELL NO TO HIRING
AMERIANS! KEEP THE BOATLOADS OF CHINESE AND INDIANS COMING!
Tech firms fight hiring rules in
immigration bill…. NO AMERICANS NEED APPLY!!!
Americans would "be shocked to know that most
of the H-1B visas … are going to outsourcing companies," Sen. Dick Durbin,
D-Ill., said during a recent hearing.
Story Highlights
- Bill provision that would require
firms to post jobs for Americans is targeted
- Technology firms have spent millions
on lobbying on immigration
- Judiciary Committee set to start
working on bill
WASHINGTON – Technology firms, exercising new political clout on Capitol Hill, are lobbying against a measure in the leading Senate immigration bill that would make it harder for them to recruit workers from abroad without first taking steps to hire Americans for highly skilled jobs in programming, engineering and other fields.
The measure, part of a sweeping compromise bill drafted by a bipartisan group of eight senators, would require job openings to be posted on a new government website for 30 days and order companies to first extend job offers to "equally or better qualified" U.S. workers. It would give the U.S. Labor Department the power to review and challenge those hiring decisions.
Proponents say the measures are needed to curb abuses by companies who they say use the visa program to hire cheaper labor. Technology companies say the proposed rules would cripple their ability to hire the best employees from a global workforce and represent inappropriate government intrusion in internal hiring decisions.
The fight over hiring practices is part of the massive lobbying campaign underway on the immigration measure and will offer a fresh test of the technology industry's growing influence in Washington. The companies involved in the computer and Internet sectors spent nearly $140 million in lobbying last year -- more than twice the $69 million the industry poured into influencing Washington a decade earlier, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to begin work on the bill Thursday.
The hiring battle centers on the program that grants H-1B visas, which go mostly to college-educated foreigners in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Technology companies say they face a chronic shortage of qualified workers in these fields. The United States sets an annual limit of 85,000 visas for these companies, and the competition for them is intense: This year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services opened up the application process April 1, and the cap was reached within a week.
Industry groups have made big gains in the Senate's immigration proposal. The bill, for instance, Would increase the H-1B cap to 205,000 annually. However, tech officials warn the new recruiting requirements could drive companies to move their skilled jobs overseas, rather than comply. A commonly cited example: Microsoft's decision to open a software center in Vancouver, British Columbia, after Congress failed to pass immigration legislation in 2007 that would have significantly increased the number of H-1B visas.
Under the bill, "employers are going to have an arbitrary government standard imposed on every hiring decision," said Robert Hoffman, the top lobbyist for the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group. The proposed rule, he said, ignores subjective factors that influence hiring. "A perfect example: How does one define whether or not someone has the personality to fit into a corporate culture?" he said.
"We are not trying to change any of the fundamental policy goals that they are trying to achieve" in the Senate, Hoffman said. "We are just trying to tweak it, so that these goals and other goals, like retaining the best and brightest and growing in the United States, so that those types of goals are advanced as well."
Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, has criticized the visa program, saying it allows firms to hire "cheap indentured labor."
"The technology industry is asking the government to come in and intervene in the normal functioning of the U.S. labor market, specifically on their behalf," Hira said.
Bruce Morrison, a former Connecticut congressman who lobbies on behalf of a group that represents American engineers, said the organization will object to any effort to "dilute worker protections" as the measure moves through the Senate. "The arguments from the companies is that there aren't any Americans to take these jobs," he said, "so there shouldn't be any problem."
The biggest users of H-1B visas are not brand-name companies, but little-known staffing companies that provide foreign workers on a temporary basis to U.S. companies — including banks, health insurance companies and big retailers. Cognizant, a New Jersey-based company that employs 27,000 people in the USA, is the top user of the temporary visas, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services records show. Most of its workers come from India.
In addition, three India-based outsourcing companies rank among the top five recipients of H-1Bs, according to the federal data.
Americans would "be shocked to know that most of the H-1B visas … are going to outsourcing companies," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., one of eight senators who drafted the immigration bill, said during a recent hearing. "They're going to these firms, largely in India, who are finding workers, engineers, who will work at low wages in the U.S."
Durbin is a driving force behind the hiring requirements in the Senate proposal.
The measure would make business harder for staffing companies dependent on foreign workers. It would impose higher fees on firms that rely on overseas employees for more than 30% of their workforce. Starting in 2016, the bill would bar granting any new temporary visas for foreign workers at companies with more than half their workers on the visas. Both measures apply to companies that employ more than 50 people.
Cognizant spokesman John Procter said he did not have a breakdown on the percentage of the company's workers in the USA on H-1B visas. He said the bill imposes an "arbitrary, detrimental restriction on the number of skilled immigrants."
"It would really change the way America does business," he said. "The company is very focused on educating legislators and making sure this language doesn't make its way into any final outcome."
Cognizant hired its first federal lobbyist in 2010 andby last year, it had spent nearly $1 million on federal lobbying, congressional records show. Its team includes Democratic power broker Heather Podesta, who did not return a telephone call. Other companies also have stepped up their political activity.
Last month, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Netflix's Reed Hastings, Google's Eric Schmidt and other technology executives teamed up to underwrite an advocacy group to promote their views on immigration. Two of its subsidiaries began a seven-figure advertising campaign to shore up voter support for key senators in the immigration debate.
The tech industry "has clearly come of age," said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. "In the last decade, we've seen this tremendous recognition from Silicon Valley of the need to play in the power circles — to both protect their bottom line and to alter the political scene to their advantage."
DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TERM
2/3s OF ALL JOBS WENT TO IMMIGRANTS, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGAL. FEDERAL WORKPLACE
ENFORCEMENT of LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT of ILLEGALS PLUMMETED 70% DURING
HISPANDERING OBAMA’S FIRST TERM… and are expected to be nonexistent during his
second.
Obama and Justice
Sotomayor (A LA RAZA PARTY MEMBER) Vow to Illegals to SABOTAGE E-verify!
VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY?
EMPLOYERS SAY NO TO HIRING AMERICANS… THE COST OF
OBAMACARE IS CHEAPER WHEN THEY HIRE MORE ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY
NUMBERS!
more at this link – post on your Facebook and email broadcast
AMNESTY….LA
RAZA IS PRINTING OUT FRAUD I.D.s BY THE MILLIONS.
"They hauled them down to the
border," Sakuma said. "Three days later, they were standing in our
office, but they had a different name and a different Social Security
number."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/04/here-come-la-raza-hordes-for-our-jobs.html
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