Corporate Abuse of Employment Related Immigration

Irvine, CA, December 1, 2015 (Newswire.com) - ​Large global outsourcing companies are squeezing American small businesses out of foreign employees, according to a recent New York Times article by Julia Preston. Business owners in the United States, in need of tech-savvy foreign employees, are losing out to money-laden corporations. 

Twenty companies, 13 of which are global outsourcing companies, acquired 40% of the 85,000 visas that were granted to foreign workers in 2014. The impact of a few companies receiving such an inordinate amount of visas is crippling for many small businesses. The remaining 53,000 visas were spread amongst 10,000 different employers. For a small business, one highly skilled employee can create numerous jobs for others. One capable foreign employee can also save an employer the expense of hiring many where one will do. 

The large corporations, which claim they are not practicing H-1B visa abuse, flood applications into the USCIS, quickly filling the quota of 85,000. Once the quota has been filled, applications are subjected to a lottery. The more applications a company submits, the more likely they are to be chosen. Each application cost approximately $4,000, leaving many companies scraping just to submit one. 

The practice of flooding the lottery system is unfair, says a spokesperson for The Spanish Group. In past years, the translation service, which handles requests for certified documents from those applying for visas, received up to 70% of their clients from random companies across diverse industries in the United States and Canada. Now, the company reports that the vast majority of their services are for one major corporation. The Spanish Group said they feel the monopolization of the lottery system unfairly disenfranchises many small employers.

Tata Consultancy Services, referred to as TCS, is a large consultant firm with more than 325,00 employees worldwide. They received 5,650 visas for immigration to the United States. They had submitted applications for at least 14,000, according to a federal records analysis by Professor Hira of Howard University.

The H-1B visa program was created by Congress so that American employers could hire foreign employees who demonstrated exceptional skill sets desired by their companies. The company looking to hire a foreigner had to demonstrate that a candidate could not be found in the United States to fill the spot. Many of the visas were traditionally sought by foreign students who had come to study in the United States, and then started a tech business while here. When they could not win a visa, they were forced to leave, often quitting their business much to their employees dismay. 

Sixty-five thousand visas are made available to first-time foreign applicants every year, according to the New York Times article. The 20,000 remaining visa application spots are reserved for foreign students who are graduating from universities within the United States that wish to remain in the country to work after completing their studies.

The Spanish Group,a certified translation service, believes that the gaming of the application lottery is an industry-wide trend, according to Sandra Saenz. They noticed that the majority of the requests for 'certified translations' required by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service on visas were coming from the same companies.

The top companies receiving visas for temporary employment workers are the Indian outsourcing companies TCS, Infosys and Wipro; Cognizant, based in New Jersey; and Accenture, which is incorporated in Ireland. 

These companies have used considerable resources to figure out how to win the most visas, resources that American small business owners simply cannot compete with.

About the Spanish Group:
The Spanish Group operates out of San Diego and Los Angeles, California. They are a leading Spanish translation service. They provide professional Spanish and English translations for business documents, civil certificates (birth certificates, marriage certificates), employee manuals, legal documents, websites, medical documents, and literature, among others. 

CONTACT INFORMATION: 
Contact Name: Sandra Saenz 
Phone Number: (800) 460-1536
Email: sandra@thespanishgroup.org