Cognizant, Tata, Infosys, the list goes on, the all have been gaming the system for 30 years now to funnel people to the US like Mexican Coyoties. They're not in the game to hire US people, it's all about funneling as many Southeast Asians as possible here.
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.
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.
It's not limited to the US. Here in Latvia, which is one of the poorest EU country, we have seen an influx of Indian citizens willing to emigrate. Many will work for little more than 1 or 2€ per hour, and come here by bribing emigration officiers or paying fees to local shady schools that act as visa mills.
> US to drop an anchor kid to force naturalization
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.
> I've always wondered why the US didn't change this law (to right of blood)?
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.
The 14th Amendment put birthright citizenship into the Constitution. The concern was not at all with immigration, but with preserving the legal status of the Black population.
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.
Maybe not guaranteed, but still certainly creates a certain problem of deporting the parents when they can't the child, not to mention general sympathy of splitting families and such, and no one wants to be on the news for that.
The frustrating thing about all of this is that Cognizant didn't really get in trouble for blatantly abusing the H1B program, but for discriminating against non-Indians.
If they'd just keep their non-Indian workers happy, they could've, in all likelihood, continued abusing the H1B program forever.
They can't even keep the Indian workers happy. I've seen them wince when a hand was raised like they were to be slapped again and berated in their own language around others. This doesn't even get into their whole caste discrimination system either.
Shocking absolutely no one. It is no secret that outsourcing companies like Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, HCL, Wipro, Accenture, E&Y have been openly abusing the H-1B visa and the immigration system as a whole for decades. Lawsuits and fines are just a cost of doing business for them.
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.
The next administration's think tank's plan to solve this is to eliminate the program altogether. There was also talk in a video I think from Jamelle Bouie of the NYT talking about these groups going further and declaring anyone that subsequently went on to be naturalized while living here under these and other programs to have their citizenship revoked. The idea being that only applying for citizenship under the slow process while you are in your home country will be seen as legal, and this is a part of the Chevron Deference ruling. I'd love to hear anyone weigh in on that from a legal standpoint, or offer anything specifically refuting it, and of course all of this will be immediately challenged, so, no reason to feel like the fight has been lost before it has begun.
Some stuff about wanting to highly restrict these programs:
Making the process itself harder can be counterproductive.
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.
India has over 1 billion people, and millions of engineers, that is not surprising at all because even if a small fraction applies for H-1B they would quickly surpass the quota.
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.
> There was also talk in a video I think from Jamelle Bouie of the NYT talking about these groups going further and declaring anyone that subsequently went on to be naturalized while living here under these and other programs to have their citizenship revoked.
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."
Here's a fact sheet from the ACLU which covers the USCIS denaturalization unit created by Trump during his last administration. [0]
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.
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.
All the USA would have needed to prevent instances like this was some minimal sensible updating of their skilled immigration policies adapting to market shifts, something you can expect from any mature government.
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.
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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.
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.
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...
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.
Deleted Comment
If they'd just keep their non-Indian workers happy, they could've, in all likelihood, continued abusing the H1B program forever.
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.
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...
And to slow down the application process, increase fees and force people to rely on premium processing more.
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.
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?
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...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
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.