Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

Call in today at 1pm EST to give your feedback to USCIS & USCIS Ombudsman

CIS OMBUDSMAN Listening Session - Thursday, January 19 from 1-2 pm EST
https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/customs-immigration/cis-ombudsman-listening-session-immigration-concerns-and-options-for-laid-off-foreign-workers/

In this listening session, the CIS Ombudsman & USCIS officials want to hear about “any ideas for how USCIS could practically mitigate the immigration impacts of layoffs on foreign workers.”

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Please call in to give your feedback to USCIS during this call today and/or send an email. A registration/RSVP link and an email address to provide feedback for this listening session are provided in the above article.

It s important for these USCIS officials and the CIS Ombudsman to hear directly from American workers who are being harmed by the numerous legal & policy loopholes in the H-1B (and L-1 & F1 OPT/CPT) visa program.

Typically, these calls concerning USCIS rules & policies for work visas are only attended by immigration attorneys, lobbyists, and foreign workers - with no American workers on the calls.

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H-1B is supposed to be used for ‘skill shortages’ in the U.S. workforce, but instead it is often used by employers a) to lay-off and replace qualified American workers with cheaper foreign workers and then to eventually outsource some or all of the jobs and b) to avoid considering qualified American applicants altogether.

Currently, H-1B and L-1 nonimmigrant workers already have a 60-day grace period to remain in the U.S. after a job loss and look for a new job - because of a USCIS rule enacted during the last year of the Obama administration (2016).

But a USCIS H-1B and L-1 wage rule finalized in December 2020 by the Trump administration to protect American workers was quickly delayed by the Biden administration in January 2021 and then later rescinded, so it never took effect. This rule would have significantly increased the wages that employers would be required to pay H-1B and L-1 workers, which would have helped protect American workers by eliminating the incentive for employers to hire foreign workers just because they are cheaper.

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| 1881 views | | 6 replies (last February 2, 2023) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1kL4LJDx

6 replies (most recent on top)

I sent a comment to provide feedback after that fact, got a response that the group does not make policy, just listening for ideas... Whateves. I suspect they got a lot more negative feedback from American workers than anticipated.

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Post ID: @ezig+1kL4LJDx

the best to ask is to stop outsourcing to other countries.

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Post ID: @4vjt+1kL4LJDx

How did the call go? Did the government decide to listen to voters or just take the lobby money from the company as they do all the time? You dont have to reply we all know the answer.

Was a nice effort though.

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Post ID: @4syg+1kL4LJDx

theyve been mass outsourcing actual good paying jobs since the 90s man, through multiple changes in political parties. Id say you were likely born in the 90s and havent figured out that both parties have the same results outside of the TVs/Social Medias forced wedge issues used to divide the people and put them against eachother.

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Post ID: @1azy+1kL4LJDx

https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-22347/p-122

Some staffing companies may also be described as outsourcing companies, i.e., companies that are hired to perform services or produce goods for another company and, in some cases, also seek to transfer work from the United States to workers based abroad to reduce the overall costs of the services they provide to clients in the United States.[30]

Outsourcing companies have been criticized as “gaming the system” so that they have a ready pool of low-paid temporary workers, which ultimately hurts the wages of U.S. workers.[31]

The “outsourcing” business model involves using H-1B visas to bring relatively low-cost foreign workers into the United States and then contracting them out to other U.S. companies seeking their services.[32]

These H-1B workers are relatively “low-paid” or “low-cost” in the sense that they are often paid less than the local median salary for workers in the same occupation, in other words, often paid less than what the worker would command in a truly competitive open job market.[33]

H-1B employers are able to “take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay many of their H-1B workers below the local median wage for the jobs they fill.” [34]

By bringing in lower-paid foreign workers, U.S. companies, in turn, may be incentivized to avoid hiring more U.S. workers or, even worse, lay off their own, higher-paid U.S. workers who previously performed those services adequately and replace them with lower-paid H-1B workers of lesser qualifications employed by a staffing company.[35]

An employer's preference for hiring H-1B workers based on their citizenship, immigration status, or national origin could violate the INA's anti-discrimination provision at INA section 274B, 8 U.S.C. 1324b.[36]

Further still, the outsourcing companies may ultimately send their H-1B nonimmigrant workers back to their home countries to perform their jobs or move a significant amount of work overseas to capitalize on lower costs of business, taking away even more U.S. jobs.[37]

As a result, DHS is concerned that the current regulatory regime encourages some companies to use the H-1B visa as a tool to lower business costs at the expense of U.S. workers.[38]

U.S.-based companies that are not traditionally in the staffing or outsourcing business also have exploited the H-1B program in ways not contemplated by Congress.[39]

In recent years, U.S. companies such as The Walt Disney Company, Hewlett-Packard, University of California San Francisco, Southern California Edison, Qualcomm, and Toys “R” Us have reportedly laid off their qualified U.S. workers and replaced them with H-1B workers provided by H-1B-dependent outsourcing companies.[40]

In some cases, the replaced U.S. workers were even forced to train the foreign workers who were taking their jobs and sign nondisclosure agreements about this treatment as a condition of receiving any form of severance.[41]

These examples illustrate how the current regulatory regime of the H-1B program allows employers, whether staffing, outsourcing, or other types of companies, to exploit the H-1B program in ways not contemplated by Congress.

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Post ID: @aer+1kL4LJDx

Who says H1B workers were paid less? Why dont u complain about your greedy millionaire investors pressuring companies to squeeze more. When i was hired, multiple h1b workers were being paid more than me because of (2-5) years of experience tho. Not less. Then one H1B worker left for an offer twice his current rate. How are they being paid less?. Just say american cooperation loves hb1 workers more than you

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Post ID: @aow+1kL4LJDx

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