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Texan Larry Richards quit working at International Business Machines to form the Software Professionals' Political Action Committee (SOFTPAC) and was it's executive director. Richards facetiously applied to bring 20 foreign computer programmers into the United
States---and pay them $5 an hour. The U.S. Labor Department bureaucracy gave him a rubber-stamp OK. Richards said that he filed an application to hire foreign programmers at $5 an hour, a rate far below the prevailing wage, and it was approved in just six days.
This is a perfect example of what is wrong with the government's H1-B visa program, a system intended to prevent companies from bringing in groups of low-paid foreign workers to compete with American laborers.
Technically, the approval of the application was in compliance with the program, but it was obviously against the spirit of H1-B. The approval also showed that, in a massive bureaucracy, just about any application can get approved.
"The problem is that there is so little with the H1-B program that is illegal," says Richards,
"And there is no checking going on at all, either."
The H1-B law says that companies must pay immigrant workers at least the prevailing wage for the occupation - and most computer programmers make at least $20 an
hour [in 1995], not $5. This case shows that the federal government uses the honor system to enforce prevailing wages - they don't verify that employers are offering fair salary.
Sadly, Larry Richards disbanded SoftPac in other to pursue a career. Hopefully this LCA of his will live on forever as a symbol of the corrupt H-1B visa. |
