Judge Nukes Trump’s Promise to Protect American Graduates from H-1B Outsourcing

In this photograph taken on December 13, 2016, an employee of Indian IT security solutions
SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP via Getty
Neil Munro

A judge has gutted the Trump administration’s minimal curbs on the many Indian-run companies that import  Indian college graduates to take the jobs needed by young U.S. graduates.

“A recent federal policy for employers that place H-1B skilled guestworkers at third-party worksites can’t be enforced,” according to a March 11 report in Bloomberg Law.

Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Tuesday that a February policy memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services didn’t go through proper rulemaking procedure, and that the agency’s interpretation of the “employer-employee relationship” requirement is inconsistent with its regulation.

The lawsuit was brought by the ITServe Alliance, a Texas-based industry group. The group’s mostly Indian-born members import Indian visa workers who are rented out to ‘third party’ established U.S. firms, often in cooperation with bigger Indian companies, such as Infosys or Tata.

This outsourcing business has prospered despite great evidence that some Indian companies violate laws designed to protect Americans from discrimination.

Administration officials adopted the H-1B protection rules in a simple “policy memo,” but refused to convert them into formal regulations. The officials work in President Donald Trump’s administration at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency.

“USCIS is currently reviewing the court’s decision, and we have no additional comment to provide at this time,” an official told Breitbart News.

“It is heartbreaking to know the impact to American workers, and President and his adminis[tration] aren’t even trying,” said a graduate in the tech sector. “It’s a big joke and has been all along. They have done NOTHING to stop any of this stuff, not even the low hanging fruit.”

The decision is a threat to Trump because it torpedoes his 2016 election promise to millions of Americans college graduates that would end the use of H-1B as a cheap labor program. “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first,” he said in March 2016.

 “They may appeal –otherwise, nothing is going to happen,” said John Miano, at the Immigration Reform law Insitute.  He continued:

I don’t think they will go to the effort of writing [formal] regulations. If they had wanted to, they would have done it already.

You have to get guys a the top to push down — and the people who got Trump elected, don’t have access to Trump anymore. He’s getting input from the people who were fighting to defeat him. We can’t expect President Trump to know this stuff.

The judge’s decision allows the “human resources” and purchasing departments at many U.S. companies, banks, and insurance firms to freely delegate hiring decisions to an array of Indian-run companies, despite the extensive evidence of Indian discrimination against Americans graduates.

The Indian-run companies are hired by the American companies to import foreign contract-workers via the H-1B, H4EAD, Curricular Practical Training (CPT), and Optional Practical Training (OPT) programs. The imported workers are willing to accept low wages, poor treatment by managers, and even the need to pay kickbacks to their managers, American and Indian graduates tell Breitbart News.

Many Indian graduates accept the Indian-style workplace rules because the Indian managers dangle the prize of hugely valuable green cards for the Indian employees, their spouses and children, and for their elderly parents.

Nationwide, roughly one million imported Indian graduates hold the jobs — full-time or contract jobs — needed by U.S. graduates who are trying to raise their wages, buy homes, and grow families.

There are no caps on the number of foreign graduates allowed to take jobs in the United States, mostly because there are no caps on the award of work permits via the CPT and OPT program. In 2018, for example, roughly 350,000 foreigners got work permits via the OPT program.

House Democrats and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) are pushing a law — S.386 — that would offer citizenship to many more Indians if they take jobs from U.S. graduates.

The judge cited Congress’s language when she struck down the token USCIS protections set for American graduates, said Miano.

The protections curbed the widespread business of importing H-1Bs and renting them out for any jobs which appeared in the computer-related business. This means that Indian-run staffing companies can recruit cheap workers in India, and then rent them to established companies at cheap rates, he said. This outsourcing means that U.S companies have sharply reduced their direct hires of American graduates, largely cutting them out of the labor market.

The protections denied H-1B workers to outsourcing companies unless those companies showed the H-1Bs needed for specific full-time, described jobs — not for renting the into the overall labor market whenever a job comes open, said Miano. That protection was a problem for the outsourcing companies because many of their H-1Bs sit “on the bench,” as they unproductively wait between contract jobs, he said.

But the judge is “basically saying [USCIS] can’t count ‘unproductive time’ as being unemployed,” said Miano. “She’s saying that Congress required people to pay [H-1B wages] when they are unproductive and that mans Congres is recognizing that H-1Bs can be unproductive, so USCIS has to allow that” business model of renting H-1Bs to other companies. 

“The impact is huge in the computer and engineering fields … in some years, we’re importing more H-1B workers for engineering than we’re creating engineering jobs,” he said. 

“The purpose of the H-1B program is to replace Americans with cheaper foreign workers,” said Miano, adding:

That’s it. No other description matches what Congress enacted, yet the media persists that with that bullshit notion that it is designed to provide higher-skilled workers. This notion is a typical lobbyist tactic  — they take a turd and call it a rose, and most of the American media will call it a rose if the politicians — especially Democrats – say it is a rose.

Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC, or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com

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