BY Stephen Stock, Julie Putnam, Scott Pham and Jeremy Carroll, NBC News | Link to Article
BY Stephen Stock, Julie Putnam, Scott Pham and Jeremy Carroll, NBC News | Link to Article
A year-long investigation by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit and The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) raises questions about a well-known visa program setup to recruit foreign workers to the US: Is it indentured servitude in the high tech age? Or is it a necessary business model to compete in a quickly changing high tech economy?
NBC Bay Area and CIR’s team discovered an organized system that supplies cheap labor made up of highly-educated and highly-skilled foreign workers who come to the US via H-1B visas.
Consulting firms recruit and then subcontract out skilled foreigners to major tech firms throughout the country and many in Silicon Valley.
Those who work for these third party firms that skirt the law often call them “body shops” and sometimes they get caught.
For example in August, 2014, a Cupertino man involved with one body shop pleaded guilty and was sentenced in US District Court to 19 felony counts of visa fraud where he admitted he knowingly applied for work visas for foreigners who had no job offers, filling out applications for fake jobs for a Silicon Valley tech firm.
However, some local workers say many don’t get caught. And the workers are the ones who suffer.
“It virtually makes these employees a slave,” said one worker who came from India more than a decade ago.
“The body shops have a specific business model,” the worker said. “They make business and profit by having cheap labor.”
Because the man fears for his safety and his future, he asked that he remain anonymous. He had worked for 7 to 8 different body shops before he spoke to us.
“There are times when I am trapped there are times when I am, yes, I feel I am trapped,” he said.