Infosys has agreed to pay a record $34 million dollar fine for visa abuse. Infosys was circumventing the H-1B quota by bringing foreign workers in under B visitor visas instead. Such foreign workers have to return home every few months to renew their visas.
This is a very common practice throughout the industry — and it is not just the Indian companies that are doing it. When I worked for the now-defunct American company Digital Equipment, they were doing the exact same thing.
Here are some points that this raises:
- Be sure that your vendors provide proof that any labor they supply has valid work visas. Imagine if the Department of Justice found out that your company had been providing photo ID badges for aliens who are supposed to be just visiting.
- The immigration system needs to be reformed to provide comprehensive enforcement. The fitting punishment for using B visas to avoid H-1B visas would be to ban the employer from all guestworker visas for several years.
- The United States desperately needs a system of exit tracking. This kind of B visa abuse could be identified easily if USCIS knew when aliens leave as well as when they enter.
- The legislation that some members of Congress and the media have been fraudulently labeling as "comprehensive immigration reform" does nothing to address these problems.
This means we need an immigration reform bill that actually reforms immigration.