I am starting to do some recreational interviewing again and a recruiter was trying to get me into Hyundai.  Normally those are the type of gigs I would be interested in, but this one sounded fishy.  Sure enough, I got this email from the agent:

You will be on a call tomorrow with Vijay Mehta (Project Manager) and Rajesh, his Lead Architect. Rajesh will be talking during most of the interview cause he will be asking most of the technical questions.

I attached a document with my notes from a phone screen I listened to. Below, you will also see questions from another phone interview we listened into as well. I’d rather give you too much, and I’m hoping you won’t be blind-sided.

Good luck tomorrow! Please give me a call after the interview.

Carlo

OMG!!!!!  Two slumdogs and the agent is sneaking me the questions?  WTF?

Here is what I sent him this morning:

Sorry, this is not going to work.  Just between you and me, I don't think this is a good cultural fit.  I've worked in shops dominated by Indians, and it has never worked out well.  They don't share my work ethic, and I don't like being treated like a slave.  The communication problems are just the beginning.  It is a very hierarchical, nepotistic environment and Anglos like me don't do well in such a workplace.

 

Send me a req where I am not the token white boy and we can talk.   No hard feelings.

 

It is now official, now that the Wall Street Journal has stopped being the cheerleaders for more H-1Bs.  And it is also amazing that the "Indian outsourcing giants" can call this bill discriminatory when they refuse hire Americans to staff consulting gigs in the US, and instead turn every fucking project they take over it a nepotistic curry den:

A fight is brewing between Washington and New Delhi over provisions in the U.S.'s draft immigration bill that could hobble Indian outsourcing firms' businesses in the U.S.

The proposals, which include cutting back sharply on the number of foreign workers these outsourcing companies can send to their U.S. offices, have won broad support from rival U.S. technology firms, including International Business Machines Corp. IBM +0.05% and Accenture ACN +1.98% PLC, lobbyists say.

India's $110 billion IT industry, which performs back-office tasks such as software programming, makes about half its revenue from the U.S.

Indian companies such as Infosys Ltd., 500209.BY -0.84% Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. 532540.BY -1.16% and Wipro Ltd. 507685.BY -0.82% have set up large U.S. offices to be closer to clients, staffing the sites overwhelmingly with Indian expatriates, who earn significantly less than their American counterparts.

The model has been challenged in recent years by U.S. politicians, who argue Indian outsourcing companies are misusing the program to undercut local technology-sector workers.

Now, big U.S. tech companies, which want to hire more foreign workers but can't because of competition with Indian firms for available visas, have joined the fray.

U.S. tech firms successfully lobbied for the draft immigration bill to include caps on the number of foreign workers a U.S.-based company can employ on skilled-worker visas, according to lobbyists working for U.S. firms and another representing Indian outsourcers.

The bill doesn't name countries. But Indian outsourcing giants sponsor more than half the 65,000 skilled-worker permits, known as H1-B visas, that the U.S. issues annually to workers with at least a bachelor's degree.

Many of these firms have as much as 80% of their staff in the U.S. on H1-B and other visas. The draft legislation, which is being debated in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, would prohibit companies with more than 75% of their employees in the U.S. on such visas from bringing in additional workers. That figure would fall to 65% within a year, and in the years after that the limit would be 50%.

IBM and Accenture declined to comment.

The U.S. firms are seeking to hire more foreign workers for high-skilled jobs but face a visa shortage because of competition with Indian firms.

Earlier this month, U.S.-based employers exhausted the annual 65,000-person quota for H1-B visas within days of the opening of applications, a sign of the strengthening domestic economy.

The immigration bill also seeks to raise the yearly cap on H1-B visas to 180,000. The cap on foreign workers means U.S. companies could benefit, while Indian firms would have to hire more U.S. employees.

Firms that don't comply will be barred from sending consultants to work in clients' offices, a business that accounts for roughly 50% of Indian companies' revenue in the U.S.

The foreign-worker caps were designed to get political backing to increase the number of available H1-B visas, people familiar with the negotiations said, and U.S. firms were concerned that a broader curb on visas would reduce their ability to hire more from overseas amid a dearth of U.S. computer graduates

Som Mittal, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, an India IT trade body, warned the bill was "discriminatory" and might ignite a trade war. The association estimates the regulations could wipe out a quarter of the Indian IT sector's global revenue.

Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram raised concerns about the bill with U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew during a meeting last week in Washington. He told Mr. Lew the issue of short-term work visas shouldn't be mixed up with immigration, according to an account of the meeting Mr. Chidambaram gave to Indian media.

Commercial relations between the nations are already tense because of recent Indian regulations that would impose a sweeping "Buy India" mandate, requiring that large portions of high-tech products purchased by the government be manufactured locally. U.S. and other foreign companies are lobbying against the rules, saying they conflict with free-trade norms. Other areas of contention include India's efforts to increase its tax haul, which overseas companies complain has caused confusion for investors.

India argues the provisions are needed to curb technology imports from the U.S. and spur domestic manufacturing.

Indian companies claim the U.S.'s latest proposals to restrict visas could also amount to restrictions on free trade.

But many U.S. members of Congress contend India is misusing the H-1B system to bring in fairly low-skilled employees, denying those places to higher-skilled workers that U.S. firms want to hire.

On Monday, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the immigration bill, Brad Smith, Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT +3.79% chief counsel, said the company couldn't get enough visas for high-skilled jobs that it can't fill through hiring in the U.S.

"We are not able to fill all the jobs that we are creating," Mr. Smith said in testimony. He told the committee that Indian outsourcing firms must "evolve their business models" by hiring more Americans.

Microsoft and IBM have recently expanded their presence in India, where they have hired thousands of local employees.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) said in response that the situation was an abuse of the visa regime. "Most people would think, well, Microsoft needs these folks," he said. "And they'd be shocked to know that most of the H-1B visas are not going to companies like yours. They're going to these outsourcing companies."

Indian firms say that over the past three years, in anticipation of the visa changes, they began hiring U.S. employees at a faster rate than new foreign workers.

Nasscom, the association of Indian IT firms, said the efforts faced roadblocks because of a lack of qualified U.S. graduates.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2013, the U.S. economy will create approximately 120,000 new jobs for people with degrees in computer science.

In his testimony before the Senate committee, Mr. Smith of Microsoft said that, by his own company's calculations, U.S. colleges produce under half that number of graduates annually.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323551004578441070153741766.html

Robert X. Cringlely has been covering IT for decades and has been critical of Indian Bowel Movement's (IBM) labor practices and ethnic cleansing of American techies.  Here he destroys many of the myths regarding the slumdog scabs and their (ab)use by the high-tech junta:

The H-1B visa program was created in 1990 to allow companies to bring skilled technical workers into the USA. It’s a non-immigrant visa and so has nothing at all to do with staying in the country, becoming a citizen, or starting a business. Big tech employers are constantly lobbying for increases in H-1B quotas citing their inability to find qualified US job applicants. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and other leaders from the IT industry have testified about this before Congress. Both major political parties embrace the H-1B program with varying levels of enthusiasm.

But Bill Gates is wrong. What he said to Congress may have been right for Microsoft but was wrong for America and can only lead to lower wages, lower employment, and a lower standard of living. This is a bigger deal than people understand: it’s the rebirth of industrial labor relations circa 1920. Our ignorance about the H-1B visa program is being used to unfairly limit wages and steal -- yes, steal -- jobs from US citizens...

http://betanews.com/2012/10/25/h-1b-visa-abuse-limits-wages-and-steals-us-jobs/

This article also his getting traction at Slashdot, and the many comments are revealing.

THERE WILL BE RETRIBUTION

This pretty much says it all:

To fill the jobs, CSC recruited heavily in India – over half the staff, according to CSC workers who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of being fired. CSC did not respond to questions about foreign workers.

And this is pretty fuckin' absurd:

CSC celebrated the amended contract with an invitation to a July 28, 2011, picnic at Umstead Park: “Please plan to join us for BBQ and Indian Cuisine! It will be a great time to get to know your co-workers as well (as key CSC and DHHS) executives. You might even have the chance to challenge them to a game of bean bag toss or horseshoes!”

WTF? 

Costs soar for updating NC's Medicaid computer system

By Joseph Neff - jneff@newsobserver.com

Trouble in New York

In 1998, the state of New York hired Computer Services Corporation to design and run a new processing system. The new system came on line in 2005, 33 months late and $166 million over budget, a cost overrun of 47 percent. The state comptroller blamed the delay and cost overrun on both CSC and the state Department of Health.

As it built the new system, CSC was also operating the old claims system. The dual roles meant the state was paying CSC for both jobs, giving the company little incentive to bring the new system in a timely manner, according to the comptroller’s office.

The comptroller also found that the system was not based on the best technology available at the time and was unable to make timely changes when state or federal laws changed. The problems in New York were not solely the fault of CSC. The comptroller found that the Department of Health provided ineffective oversight and missed opportunities to levy penalties allowed under the contract. The department didn’t have a contingency plan in place, and when it came time in 2006 to negotiate an extension, CSC demanded a three-year extension at a cost increase of 62 percent. The comptroller initially opposed the new contract but relented when CSC said it would stop processing claims.

 

[THIS LOOKS LIKE A TARGET RICH ENVIRONMENT]

 

People walk to and from the employee parking lot during lunch hour at CSC in Raleigh. CSC holds the biggest contract in state history, a half-billion effort to replace the state's antiquated Medicaid claims program. The computer system is years behind schedule, with hundreds of millions in cost overruns.

RALEIGH In a bland office park off Lake Boone Trail, two computer teams toil away on behalf of the biggest contract in state history – the computer system that processes 88 million Medicaid claims each year.

The 500-plus team of workers from Computer Sciences Corporation, a tech company from northern Virginia, is working to finish the new system by next summer. Upstairs, 200 workers from Hewlett Packard, the technology giant from California, keeps the old 1980s-era system running, receiving, auditing and paying about 250,000 claims each day.

The project has gone in fits and starts since it began in 2004: cancelled and rebid, then amended and extended. Costs have kept rising, so much so that the expense of setting up the new system and running it for seven years, plus maintaining the old system, now adds up to an eye-popping figure: $851 million.

And that’s if it goes on line next summer, as scheduled.

Little in this project has gone as scheduled. The first contractor was dismissed, only $16 million into the work. The second, CSC, is two years behind its original timeline. In the world of information technology, the delays and overruns earn it the title of a “black swan” project.

Most of the delays and cost increases come from changes in federal and state laws and regulations, according to Al Delia, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services. He likened it to a home construction project where the owner asks the builder to add a second floor and garage midstream.

“Most of what have been called cost overruns aren’t really cost overruns,” Delia said.

In the long run, state officials say, the new system has the potential to save the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Along with processing claims for Medicaid – the government health care plan for the poor and disabled – the contract requires the system to be able to process claims from other payers, such as the State Health Plan or the state prison system.

“We expect this will be cutting edge, state of the art,” Delia said.

If so, it will be an unusual cutting-edge system: it’s largely written in COBOL, a computer language developed in the 1950s that is scarcely taught in North Carolina – just community colleges in Hickory and Charlotte. CSC has imported workers from India to fill the jobs in Raleigh.

Legislators wonder if state officials will ever be able to get the project finished.

“The $640 million question is, will the Medicaid system operate as billed?” asked state Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Cary Republican who co-chairs a committee that oversees DHHS. “We are skeptical until we see it.”

CSC declined to answer questions, but released a statement saying the project would be completed on time and within budget: “This new system will enable the State to better manage costs, improve healthcare administrative efficiency and enhance customer service for healthcare providers and recipients.... We are focused on delivering a high performance healthcare system that meets the specific needs of North Carolina and its constituents.”

High hopes

In 2003, the state solicited bids to replace the outmoded Medicaid claims system, which had been operated for 35 years by EDS, a Texas company later purchased by Hewlett Packard. Millions of lines of computer code power the program, which accepts claims from some 70,000 providers – doctors, clinics, hospitals, nursing homes and others.

It’s a big business: the Medicaid program will cost nearly $13 billion in North Carolina this year, about 23 percent from state funds and the rest federal. The new system is designed to detect fraud and avoid waste.

Federal tax dollars pay for 90 percent of the design of the new program and half of its operating costs.

There were high hopes in 2004 when the state gave the $171 million contract to Affiliated Computer Systems to replace the 1980s system.

The project “continues to forge ahead with great expectations,” according to a 2005 letter from Angeline Sligh, the director of the project. “It is our goal that this be one of the best replacement implementations in the nation.”

The project soon fell behind, with DHHS officials and ACS arguing over timeline and payments, each blaming the other for the mess. In May 2006, State Chief Information Officer George Bakolia threatened to kill the project unless the two sides could resolve their differences and come up with workable plan. Bakolia demanded new project managers at DHHS and ACS.

In July 2006, the state cancelled the contract, and eventually paid ACS $16.5 million, partly for work, partly to settle a lawsuit.

The state replaced its project managers, who run the program day to day. Their supervisors – Sligh and her boss, Assistant Secretary for Finance Dan Stewart – remained on the job.

An extension, a picnic

Round two began in 2008, when the state awarded a $265 million contract to CSC, with a go-live date of August 2011.

The contract sparked a fierce fight. HP, which runs the 1980s system, was a bidder on the new contract and protested on technical and political grounds: CSC had retained former DHHS Deputy Secretary Lanier Cansler as a lobbyist. Weeks after the contract award, Cansler was named DHHS secretary by Gov. Bev Perdue.

Stewart denied the protest.

In its bid documents, CSC estimated that 90 percent of the millions of lines of computer code needed could be copied from its New York Medicaid program. CSC later revised that to 73 percent; in the end, because of big differences between the New York and North Carolina Medicaid programs, only 32 percent of the New York code was used.

The program soon fell behind, and in the summer of 2010 CSC asked for an extension. Following a lengthy negotiation, the state granted an 18- to 22-month extension and raised the contract price to $495 million.

CSC celebrated the amended contract with an invitation to a July 28, 2011, picnic at Umstead Park: “Please plan to join us for BBQ and Indian Cuisine! It will be a great time to get to know your co-workers as well (as key CSC and DHHS) executives. You might even have the chance to challenge them to a game of bean bag toss or horseshoes!”

Delia, who became DHHS secretary in February, says CSC added six months of delay by overestimating how much code it could bring from New York. The company agreed to pay the state $10 million in damages, an amount criticized as unsubstantiated and low in a subsequent state audit.

The rest of the delay, Delia said, stems from changes in federal and state laws and regulations, and was out of the control of DHHS.

A January report from State Auditor Beth Wood questioned the six-month figure, saying that DHHS did a poor job of documenting how it made key decisions: determining the six-month delay; calculating the damages owed by CSC; and tracking $30 million in unauthorized changes that CSC made in the program.

The audit was contentious from the start. Stewart told Wood that his staff was too busy to answer questions and provide documents. Their cooperation “will, by necessity, be minimal due to the lack of staff time, the urgency to complete the project and the liability related to delaying the IT contractors working on the project.”

The department’s response, twice as long as the audit, disagreed with virtually every paragraph, calling the audit biased, inaccurate, unproductive, ill-informed, unfounded and asinine.

Wood called the audit the most difficult of her career.

“It was the most uncooperative, dragging-the-feet, missing-deadlines audit like I’ve never seen,” she said.

During a hearing in January, legislators looking into the project asked Angie Sligh to grade her management of the contract. She gave herself an A.

Writing in COBOL

The audit did not touch on the fact that the state contracted in 2008 for a program written in COBOL, a computer language written in the 1950s. According to Bakolia, the former state chief information officer, COBOL is used in banking, transportation and federal systems that have been in use for decades, but it is almost never used in new systems.

“If the programs are written well and operate, companies don’t want to rewrite them,” Bakolia said. “If I were to write something today, it would not be COBOL. You can’t support it.”

In North Carolina, classes in COBOL are as popular as 8-track tapes. Wake Tech’s extensive computer science offerings don’t have COBOL, and neither does N.C. State.

Frank Mueller, an N.C. State computer science professor, said the supply of COBOL programmers is dwindling as people retire.

“As a consultant to any company, I would probably advise them against using COBOL,” Mueller said. “The problem is that it’s harder to find someone to change the code. If you change the law, you have to change the code.”

Asked about COBOL in an interview Thursday, Stewart said: “This is the first time I’ve ever heard that question raised.”

To fill the jobs, CSC recruited heavily in India – over half the staff, according to CSC workers who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of being fired. CSC did not respond to questions about foreign workers.

Stewart said he had no idea about the staff makeup.

“I have never seen their staff,” he said.

Delia said it is not an issue.

“It’s a private company, we have no way of knowing,” Delia said. “They are legal workers, it’s kind of a non-question.”

After working through a tough audit, firing a contractor and enduring multiple extensions, state officials have now turned their attention to another participant in the project: their own watchdog.

They are threatening to fire Maximus Inc., the Virginia firm paid to police the project for the state. Maximus, nearing the end of a three-year contract, is paid $1 million a year.

Neff: 919-829-4516

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/06/17/2142627/state-contract-for-updating-computer.html

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/06/17/2142627/state-contract-for-updating-computer.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/06/17/2142627/state-contract-for-updating-computer.html#storylink=cpy

Half the team at the heart of the RBS disaster WERE in India

Chiefs warned repeatedly on quality of offshored work

By Anna Leach

Posted in Financial News, 28th June 2012 10:36 GMT

The beginning of the end for SLUMDOG SLAVETRADE:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7405064n

"...The Indians had no knowledge at all..."

Uh, no shit.  I bet Andrew Wasser starts getting death threats from the Indian Outsourcing Regime, or a slumdog CMU student throws acid in his face.

IT Outsourcing System Is Broken, How Can Service Providers Fix It?

– Stephanie Overby, CIO

March 29, 2012 

 

Andrew Wasser's perch affords him a broad view of the IT outsourcing industry. Wasser serves as associate dean of the Heinz College's School of Information Systems and Management at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where a third of the graduate students studying applied business and information technology are refugees from the IT services industry. He has oversight over many of CMU's business projects that are commissioned by a virtual who's who of the outsourcing industry -- providers, clients and consultancies. And, as a veteran financial services CIO and director of CMU's CIO Institute, he has an intimate understanding of the outsourcing practitioner's point of view.

From his multidimensional perspective, one thing is clear: The outsourcing system is broken. Heck, if you go by the old saw that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, it's downright crazy. The vendors say they are strategic partners, but they are in fact neither strategic nor partners. Both providers and customers say they want to create more business value and innovation, but neither is making the changes necessary to do that.

CIO.com talked to Wasser about what ails the outsourcing industry -- from talent gaps and process devotion to closed-off clients and poor communication -- and what, if anything, could turn things around.

CIO.com: You have a particular interest in the growing talent gap in the global sourcing industry. What is the state of offshore outsourcing recruiting?

Wasser: As important as what we are seeing is why we are seeing it.

My bias is in looking at the big Indian firms -- Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, TCS -- and to some extent the Accentures, IBMs and captive centers. In the beginning when you talked to a tier-one sourcing [firm], they would tell you, "We get the best of the best." They made offers only to the top 0.5 percent at the universities. And they may still tell you that today, but the reality is quite different.

Because of increased competition and a shortage of talent, they have had to go much deeper into the pool of students and go to second and third-level schools. They are no longer getting the best and the brightest. It's no longer a coup to get an offer from Tata because everyone is getting an offer from Tata.

CIO.com: Is that just a result of needing more people? Are they still recruiting the best and brightest as well -- or is that top talent going elsewhere?

Wasser: These firms have hiring targets -- sometimes as many as 5,000 new employees. They may be getting, at best, the top quartile. I don't have a good handle on where the top decile is going. These young professionals entering the sourcing industry end up "going back to school" at Infosys or Cognizant or Tata, which all have their own academies. They take mechanical or chemical engineers and teach them how to be IT engineers, ideally with some client skills. They repackage them.

CIO.com: What's the biggest complaint you hear from outsourcing customers?

Wasser: We see continued frustration from clients that these people are really good order takers, but they are not problem solvers. They are smart -- no question -- but they are not the strategic partners they had hoped they would be.

CIO.com: Can you trace all of that dissatisfaction back to the recruiting issues at the junior level?

Wasser: I have several hypotheses. One issue is what I call the "filter effect." The sourcing firms go to the same affiliate universities and programs year after year. The HR people have a formulaic set of attributes they are looking for. Did they take discrete math or programming one and two? How were their grades? When they can check off all the boxes, they make an offer.

So they are getting students who have done exactly what they were supposed to do. They graduated from high school with good grades. They told their parents they wanted to study history or art. The parents said, "Great, but you're going to be an engineer." They have no gaps in their studies, no blemishes on their records, their extracurriculars are all in place. And when they finally graduate with a chance to do something innovative or unique, they once again do exactly what mom and dad tells them to do -- apply for a job at IBM or Infosys.

Then the firms say, "Why aren't my people innovating?" Well, you filtered out all the people who might innovate -- the guy who took time off to hike the mountains or the girl who tried to start her own t-shirt company or the student who stumbled freshman year because he was interested in guitars and girls. You hired people who are good at doing what they are told and now you wonder why they're only [a] good order taker.

CIO.com: Couldn't the providers teach them how to approach the work differently?

Wasser: I think so. But that gets to what I call the "treatment effect." Once you get into these sourcing companies, they all follow CMM-I or Six Sigma or ITIL. They put in place all these SLAs and metrics and procedures and policies. I have no problem with process frameworks. They have been great for our industry and turned what was a craft into a science. But they do not foster innovation. No one is willing to say, "Hey this might not meet the SLA or it's not ITIL, but here's a novel way to address a business need."

CIO.com: Are these problems only found in the Indian or offshore-centric firms?

Wasser: No. They are all going after the same talent pool. Some firms tend to be more westernized. I would put Cognizant and Accenture and IBM in that mix. But they've all replicated the Indian delivery model, so they are experiencing the same problems.

One of the issues particular to offshore outsourcing is what I call the "texting effect." Whether you are in China or Mexico or India, the [English] speaking and listening and writing skills aren't always great to begin with. Adding to the problem is that engineers are notoriously weak communicators. And if, on top of that, the engineer doesn't understand the business drivers, they're never going to speak the real language of the client.

CIO.com: Do the customers themselves bear any responsibility for the lack of problem solving in their outsourcing engagements?

Wasser: The client holds a whole lot of responsibility. They often don't want to spend much time with the Indian guy -- they don't think he's that fun, he has an accent, and he can't talk about the Syracuse win last night -- that's a problem.

That is tied up with what I call the "context effect." The client tells the vendor what to do but not why they want it done. If I tell you, "Move this box from here to there," and you do not know the context, all you can do is what I tell you. But if you understand the bigger picture, you may realize you can discard some of what's in those boxes, some of it you can scan, and some you can leave behind. There is so much value in understanding the real meaning of what you are trying to accomplish. Context can be especially difficult to gain when a development center is in Monterrey or Chennai. But it is the client's responsibility to share that business context.

CIO.com: What can outsourcing customers and providers do to advance their relationships and foster the innovation they say they want?

Wasser: Some of it is obvious. Who is doing the hiring? How are they doing it? Where are they doing it? If it's the same old HR mindset, you will get the same old results. Why not take a look at the guy who dropped out of school or the music major?

But even more important is how are you incenting these workers? That is going to require some deprogramming on the client side. You can't focus on the strictest service-level agreements and then wonder why the provider didn't innovate. You didn't create an environment for innovation. You need to explain the why, not just the what.

CIO.com: Many of your master's and Ph.D. students came from the IT outsourcing industry to make the switch from order taker to business innovator. Are they going back into IT services?

Wasser: No. Most stay in the U.S. and go to client firms or consulting firms or technology firms.

I tell them that these talent gaps are an opportunity for them. What you want to be is one of [the] people [who] can fill that gap -- that polymath who can look at things from an entrepreneurial perspective. There will always be someone in Pune or Poland that can program more cheaply than you. But what the world needs is business technologists -- IT professionals who understand negotiation and information security and economics and architecture. We are not going to out-MBA the MBA or out-tech the computer scientist. We are filling the sweet spot in between the two. And that's what companies tell us they need.

http://tinyurl.com/6wpss3g

Check out this buck-toothed slumdog "student" trying to get someone to vouch for his experience at these big companies:

Yeah, no shit.

H-1B workers abuse work privileges: IG

By Alice Lipowicz
Sep 15, 2011

About 18 percent of the skilled foreign workers allowed employment in the United States under H-1B visa programs may have committed fraud or abused the program, according to a new report from the Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General.

Congress created the H-1B program in 1990 to allow highly skilled foreign workers to work within the U.S. for several years, primarily in high-tech fields. While U.S. tech companies say the foreign workers are critical to remaining competitive, American workers contend that the influx of additional workers undercuts their wages.

The H-1B program, which is run by the Homeland Security Department, allows work for tens of thousands of visa holders per year. The SSA provides Social Security numbers to the workers to be reported as wages in approved workplaces.

However, many H-1B workers did not fulfill those conditions. The SSA IG found that 18 percent of the H-1B workers who were assigned Social Security numbers for work in 2007 did not fulfill the assigned purpose, according to the report released Sept. 7. The review said that finding applied to 7,131 H-1B recipients of a total of 38.546 H-1B recipients evaluated.

Of the total cases reviewed, 11 percent worked for an employer other than the one approved by DHS, while 7 percent posted no wages during the two-year period studied, the report states.

For the 18 percent of the H-1B visa recipients who did not follow the rules, the report said it resulted in unauthorized use of the H-1B visa program.

“Unauthorized work by H-1B workers weakens SSN integrity and may require that the agency pay future benefits to individuals who misuse an SSN to work in the United States. In addition, H-1B workers who do not work for their approved employers could pose a risk to homeland security because they may obtain employment in sensitive areas,” the report states.

Applying the percentages to the entire H-1B visa holder cohort, the report concludes that thousands of H-1B visa holders may be engaging in unauthorized work each year.

“While we recognize SSA is not responsible for immigration enforcement, unauthorized work by non-immigrants impacts the agency by weakening SSN integrity,” Patrick O’Carroll Jr., SSA inspector general, wrote in the report. “We recognize there is no easy way to fix this problem. However, we believe SSA has an opportunity to help address unauthorized work by non-immigrants.”

O’Carroll recommended that the SSA work with DHS to offer to establish a data match agreement to better identify the H-1B visa holders who do use their Social Security numbers for purposes other than approved work.

SSA managers agreed with the recommendations.

It is not surprising that magic-underwear candidate Mitt Romney supports the importation of scabs to displace Americans.  After all, in his previous life, he was an evangelist for the outsourcing/offshoring regime at McKinsey and Bain Capital.

But now this dumb fuck Mormon is paying back his NASSCOM sponsors with some bullshit rhetoric about the US needing more slumdogs to put even more locals out of work.  It all just makes me want to go all "Taxi Driver" on his ass.

Romney sees tech skills shortage, and H-1B visa need

Experts rebut Romney's claim that 1.25 million high skill jobs are unfilled in U.S.

September 7, 2011 (Computerworld)

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney, a top candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has released an economic plan that would make it easier for foreign college graduates with advanced degrees in math, science and engineering to work in the U.S.

Romney's plan, unveiled this week, includes a proposal "to raise the ceiling" on visas for holders of advanced degrees in math, science "who have job offers in those fields from U.S. companies."

"These workers would not displace unemployed Americans. Rather, they would fill high-skill job openings for which there is currently an acute shortage of labor," wrote Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, in his plan.

The U.S. caps H-1B visas at 85,000 a year. Current regulations set aside 20,000 of those visas for advanced degree graduates of U.S. universities.

Romney's proposal doesn't stipulate that advanced degree holders be graduates from U.S. universities.

Romney's plan also calls for "stapling" green cards to the diplomas of technical degree graduates of U.S. universities, a plan that has been proposed by lawmakers on both sides in Congress without success.

"Even in this tough unemployment climate, as of this past spring nearly 1.25 million high-skill jobs remained unfilled," said Romney, in the economic plan released Tuesday. "A skills gap of that magnitude suppresses the productivity of our businesses and slows the overall economy. Highly educated immigrants would help fill that gap and get our economy rolling again."

Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, characterized as "dubious" Romney's claim that there is 1.25 million unfilled high-skilled positions.

"None of the official statistics support a claim that there's a shortage of these occupations," said Hira. "Unemployment rates for these occupations continue to be twice what they should be at full employment..."

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