Bad Laws Beget Bad Behavior

Angelos passed on this video, found at NetworkWorld, where it was introduced by Paul McNamara with: "Watch this video and keep it in mind the next time you hear a high-tech industry titan such as Bill Gates complain that he simply cannot find qualified American employees and therefore the country needs more H-1B visas: You'll see a panel discussion that looks like a sit-down with 'the families' on The Sopranos, only instead of talking about organized crime these lawyers are discussing the ins and outs of helping employers side-step immigration law."


The thing about this is that it's a really common practice in corporate America, not necessarily to avoid hiring Americans (although that's clearly the case here), but to retain H-1B workers. When a position is taken by someone on an H-1B employment visa, the employer must "prove" once a year that no Americans want/are qualified for the job. But wanting the job, and having the appropriate technical qualifications, isn't really the issue in a lot of creative positions. Unsurprisingly, our rubbish immigration laws have absolutely no provisions for unquantifiable skills, like design aesthetic, which are integral to the creative jobs (graphic design, game design, product design, fashion design, interior design, architecture, advertising, marketing, branding, packaging, filmmaking, music, writing, etc.) that comprise an ever-increasing percentage of American jobs.

A company that may in totally good faith hire a worker on an H-1B visa to fill an imporant creative position (e.g. design director), then spend time and resources developing a program/department around that person, is up shit creek if they can't retain that person. So they resort to the loopholes we see exploited in that video, because god forbid we write laws that make sense, like quite genuinely proving no one else wanted/was qualified for the job when you first hire an H1-B visa worker, but then letting them stay as long as they're doing the job. The law is garbage because, like most immigration law, it's meant to look like the government's actually doing something to protect American workers, while providing all kinds of loopholes for corporations.

Many, if not most, companies exploit the loopholes only to retain H1-B workers that they hired in good faith. But it was inevitable that there would emerge assholes like the ones in the video when the law was built in a way that there could be assholes like the ones in the video. Provide the opportunity, someone's going to take it.