I came across the following plea for help on an attorney blog:
I think I am exploited...
I am on H1b visa, Sponsor of my H1b could not find me a job for more than 6 months and finally decided to hire me in his consulting company in a marketing position.
First he said he will pay me $1000 a month and then dropped down to $900 a month and paid me $876 on the first month. And today he told me he has his own personal problems, his mortgage of his house and bills and asked me to work for free.
when i said i simply cant do that cause i need to eat as he does, my car doesn't run on water to go to the work and he started bargaining and said he can pay me $400 a month.
I think I wont be paid for this month. what do I need to file a law suit the papers and documents against him....need a suggestion please? I am in a serious problem.
also i am in a fear that my employer might terminate my visa for going against him? so please suggest me what can i do?
also i started working there in a mutual understanding and i have not sign any contract yet.
This is an all too common example of the situation that H-1B recipients find themselves in once they have arrived in America.
A simple Google of "H-1B visa" will give pages of websites making claims such as:
- H-1B jobs!!!
- Work in America!!
- "The current demand by our H1B employers and H1B sponsor companies is very high"
It is easy to see how many workers in third world foreign country would be swept up in promises like this. The realities are often very different for these workers who only find this out after having committed to the process and arriving in the U.S., beholden to their sponsoring company.
Indian body shops, large and small, as well as U.S. corporations are notorious for gaming the system by using the H-1B system to bring in large stables of workers to sit on the bench, ready to disperse to any I.T. job posting on Monster and any other high tech job board throughout the U.S. at a fraction of the wage of U.S. workers.
This is nothing more than modern day slavery, which only benefits the bottom line of corporations while upsetting the delicate balance of the labor market and lead to high unemployment and economic breakdown in the U.S.
Corporations and Indian bodyshop lobbyists and the immigration law firms that benefit from this program, have been perpetrating the myth that there is a shortage of tech workers in the U.S., even this does not square with a multitude of evidence to the contrary, including very high unemployment and the lack of creation of new I.T. jobs over the last ten years.
This practice of replacing I.T. workers with indentured servants, has been expanded to many other professions, even teachers...
One teacher bodyshop in Atlanta, Global Teachers Research & Resources Inc. (www.gtrr.net) advertises positions for teachers while specifically rejecting anyone who is a US citizens, US permanent resident or US greencard holder.
The reason they do this is because of the indentured nature of the H-1B relationship. Once GTRR has a stable of teachers, they offer them to school systems throught the south east U.S., and confiscates most of the H-1Bs salary, while the H-1B teachers suffer in silence.
For this reason alone, the H-1B program should be suspended indefinately until these issues can be resolved.