A Feature, not a Bug

Is anyone surprised that Tata Consultancy Services has been accused of firing US workers and replacing them with cheaper H-1B employees?

Seriously.  Abuse of H-1B and L-1A visas are their business model for operations in the United States:

A U.S. visa program for skilled foreign workers has long stoked concerns over American workers losing their jobs to lower-paid foreigners. Now a group of experienced American professionals is accusing an Indian outsourcing giant of firing them on short notice and filling many of their roles with workers from India on H1-B visas. 

The American workers say that India’s Tata Consultancy Services illegally discriminated against them based on their race and age, firing them and shifting some of their work to lower-paid Indian immigrants on temporary work visas.

Since late December, at least 22 workers have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against TCS, whose clients have included dozens of the U.S.’s biggest companies.

………

While companies often conduct layoffs that affect workers with more seniority, the American professionals say TCS broke the law by targeting them based on protected characteristics of age and race. They say the company’s move demonstrated preferential treatment to Indian workers in the U.S. on the coveted visas. 

The they are not doing this because the workers that they are bringing in are of South Asian extraction, they are doing so because they will work for a fraction of that of citizens and green card holders.

That may not be a protected class, but it is explicitly illegal under the immigration statute which allows workers under those visas.

………

The complaints revive questions about how Indian IT companies use H-1B visas. The visas are designed for skilled foreign workers but have for years led to concerns that Americans are being displaced by cheaper foreign workers with lesser qualifications. Companies apply for visas on behalf of workers and aren’t required to demonstrate that Americans with those skills are unavailable.

………

Many big U.S. tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta Platforms, which have different business models than outsourcers, use the H1-B visas to employ staff who attract high wages, and have come under less criticism.

No, Google, Microsoft, the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™, Apple, HP, and all of those American companies have been accused of exactly the same thing, and what's more they were caught openly colluding to keep wages low in Silicon Valley.

Everyone abuses the system, and everyone will until the H-1B visa system is adjusted to make it more expensive than the domestic workers that it replaces.

This visa system is supposed to be for workers that are unavailable in the US, not workers that are cheaper than in the US.