HOMELAND SECURITY PROBES L-1 VISA ABUSES The Inspector General's report published in January of this year by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), titled "Review of Vulnerabilities and Potential Abuses of the L-1 Visa Program." First, some background on what the L-1 visa program is. The program allows a foreign worker employed by a company overseas for at least one year to enter the United States temporarily, "in order to continue to render his services to the same employer or a subsidiary or affiliate ... in a capacity that is managerial, executive, or involves specialized knowledge." According to Frank Robinson, CFO at Darwin Partners, insurance companies are bringing in foreign workers under L-1, providing food and lodging, but are paying the guest workers at the salary they were getting back home. If a typical programmer in the United States makes $60,000 to $80,000 per year, these workers are being paid as little as one-quarter of that. And they can stay as long as five to seven years. These workers may be employees of the insurance company; or worse, they could be employees of IT services companies, known as "body shops," who hire them out for a fee. Using foreign workers and paying them below American scale is only one abuse. A second is bringing in workers for training. In this case, there is no way to pretend that these workers have skills that the company needs. http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=117696E:1F498CB
My last job was with an insurance carrier and they used an army of these TCS folks from India on L1 visas. They got up to 7 years on the job and got paid a pittance. With the exception of one of them, they didn't do a very good job and when I came in I had a lot of clean-up to do on the initiatives they started. It was a minor disaster.