Report Shows that Our Government Uses More than 2,000 H-1B Workers

By David North on December 2, 2019

I cannot improve on this sentence by Laura Francis of Bloomberg News:

An attempt by the Labor Department to shine a light on companies that bring on board foreign workers with the help of oft-criticized third-party placement firms has outed an unexpected employer — the federal government.

Francis was writing about the use of H-1B workers hired indirectly by various government agencies, seemingly in conflict with the Trump administration's "Hire American" proclamations. She and two colleagues (Jasmine Ye Han and Christina Brady) at Bloomberg poured over a new data set that not only shows corporations' hiring of H-1Bs directly, it also shows indirect hires through the largely Indian outsourcing firms.

Their findings:

  • More than 2,000 H-1Bs appeared to work, indirectly, for the feds.
  • Of these, 20 were at the Department of Labor, which manages part of the H-1B selection process.
  • The two largest employers within the government were Fannie May and Freddie Mac, both housing financing agencies related to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The two entities had "at least 1,340- H-1B workers sponsored by more than 460 different third-party companies".

The Trump administration's posture on foreign worker programs, despite some rhetoric and some tougher handling of parts of the H-1B program, seems to parallel the hiring practices of Trump's hotels and golf courses, which have, over the years, hired H-2B (non-skilled, non-ag) workers as well as some illegal aliens.

There does not seem to be a network of political appointees of this administration, at say the assistant to the secretary level, that is charged with making sure that the president's immigration policies are followed.

As a result, we have HUD hiring H-1Bs by the hundreds, Agriculture continuing to favor illegal alien families over all-citizen families in the SNAP (food stamps) program under certain conditions, and Treasury continuing to send income tax refunds to illegal aliens using other people's Social Security numbers.