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back to article Infosys set for $35m fine over US visa naughtiness

Indian IT services giant Infosys is bracing itself for a $35 million (£22m) fine from the US government for visa irregularities, in what will be the largest financial penalty ever handed out for an immigration infraction. The fine, expected to be announced later today, comes after a Department of Homeland Security and State …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not just a US problem

    This happens in the UK as well - our laws state that jobs must be advertised and proven that no one is available from the EU - also that the jobs are at a salary that is at the market rate.

    However, lots of TCS / Infosys / Wipro employees come over on short term visas and are definitely not paid market rates.

    This is what companies want though. Everyone wants cheaper and the argument is that everyone else is doing it so the company that does not will be doomed to fail as their costs will be much higher that their competitors.

    As a society we have accepted this. We have let our manufacturing base go to the lowest cost countries such as China and even Vietnam for shoes, Bangladesh for clothes etc.

    As consumers we didn't think this was a bad thing for manufacturing, now it is the turn of Services to go to the lowest cost base. The only difference is that to achieve this, some of the staff need to come onshore and we are seeing it locally.

    We criticise Apple a lot on The Register, they have at least started to reverse the trend with their higher cost MacPro and iMacs.

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    1. Stretch
      Reply Icon

      Re: Not just a US problem

      "However, lots of TCS / Infosys / Wipro employees come over on short term visas and are definitely not paid market rates."

      Yes well you get what you pay for.

      "We criticise Apple a lot on The Register, they have at least started to reverse the trend with their higher cost MacPro and iMacs."

      Nonsense. They are amongst the worst offenders.

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    2. Dan Paul
      Reply Icon

      Re: Not just a US problem

      No, the slide to becoming a thrid world country is not limited to the USA but it is a trend that needs to be stopped dead.

      In the beginning, 1st world business owners moved manufacturing to avoid environmental regulation, resulting in heavy manufacturing leaving the markets it served. Next, light manufacturing left for lower labor/union related costs. Last, the services industries offshored the remaining jobs for pennies on the pound lowered labor/healthcare/benefits costs.

      Who's left? The "consumers" who soon will not have any income to consume with.

      The first world countries began to see a huge shift in the haves versus the have nots. The "Haves" could care less what happens to the little people who "have not".

      Now, even the minimal employment that remains is being given to foreign workers too ignorant to know that they are getting the shaft and they themselves are shafting the local workers.

      THIS MUST STOP!

      This results in a culture of subjugation on the order of the coal mine owners of the late 1800's where they paid their employees in company scrip, worthless anywhere but in a company store where prices were highly inflated; and company housing with similar rents.

      Everywhere, people cannot make enough in true income to rise out of their initial environment as this is antithetical to the aims of the "haves" who want to stifle any direct competition with their aims to rule over the people.

      It is long past time that each and every one of us regular folk, everywhere, were to rise up and shutdown this process permanently.

      No more importation of employees, no more export of jobs. PERIOD.

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      1. btrower
        Reply Icon

        Re: Not just a US problem

        @Dan Paul

        Well said. It is time to clean house.

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  2. Peter Simpson 1

    If you want to outsource to Infosys

    You should consider carefully the attitude of the management of a corporation that would pull something like this. Then, ask yourself if you want to bet your company on code written in an organization that thinks that finding "creative" ways around visa restrictions is a good idea.

    // Wouldn't touch them with a barge pole myself. Plenty of older contractors out there who know what they're doing, laid off because some bean counter though outsourcing would save money.

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    1. Spoonsinger
      Reply Icon

      Re:"laid off because some bean counter though outsourcing would save money."

      Actually plenty of old contractors out there, who were too short sighted to see how things were going. Maybe, just maybe they shouldn't of got a contract in the first place. Just saying like.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Infopiss

    I call 'em Infopiss. They send over an army of contractors who seem to do very little of value in my personal opinion.

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  4. Velv

    To quote Rockhound in Armageddon when they're sitting on the launch pad:

    "You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?"

    Where do you trust YOUR IT to be maintained...

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    1. Tim99 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      To quote Rockhound in Armageddon when they're sitting on the launch pad:

      "You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?"

      I think that this is art following life. I remembered a similar quote from John Glenn talking about what Alan Shepard had said:

      "People asked him [Alan Shepard] that [question] after the flight," Glenn noted. "And Shepard said: `I wasn’t scared, but I was up there looking around, and suddenly I realized I was sitting on top of a rocket built by the lowest bidder.’

      There was a thread from QI about it a while ago.

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  5. Caoilte

    $35million

    $35 million sounds like "the cost of doing business" ie a slap on the wrist...

    Something a bit more punitive might have helped. Not to mention criminal charges and jail time for US Infosys execs and execs of companies who outsourced to them.

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    1. btrower
      Reply Icon

      Bingo Re: $35million

      @Caoilte:

      This is exactly why it happens in the first place and why it will go on happening. Corporations should be faced with dissolution or blacklisting as well as truly punishing fines. Better to stop them *before* than slap them after.

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    2. Alan Brown Silver badge
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      $35million is the tip of the iceberg

      That's the criminal stuff out of the way.

      Now they're wide open to personal lawsuits alleging discrimination and they'll find it incredibly hard to defend against (as will companies which have laid off workers and brought in infosys hires) The best Infosys can manage will be to try and reduce the size of claims, but exemplary damages are generally a LOT higher in USA civil cases than in criminal ones.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    I agree, $35 million is not much of a penalty

    Given the price disparity between visas, Infosys would only have to bring in about 7,000 B-1s to make up the cost of the fine. That's a number that is well within Infosys' ability to use. If you want to make Infosys think twice, tell them they have been removed from sponsoring U.S. work visas for a year or two, due to their lack of compliance with immigration laws. That will put the fear of God into the Indian outsourcing community.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typical behaviour?

    An Indian colleague of mine was once telling me about how TCS often work: at scoping and PoC time, they fly over their top guys. For the pilot they send their mid guys. Finally, when you've signed a huge contract that guarantees X "consultants" for two years, they - because they define what a "consultant" is - send over their cheap guys and go back to bathing in your money.

    Maybe it's cynicism talking, but in a country with so much corruption in government, it's hard to believe that those practices wouldn't extend all the way into some corporations as well. In fact given the strong link between government and big corporations, one could assume that a corporation there is corrupt simply by virtue of the fact that it's still in business.

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    1. arrbee
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      Re: Typical behaviour?

      Not that shocking given that management consultancies over here have been doing that for the last 30 years.

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    2. knarf
      Reply Icon

      Re: Typical behaviour?

      In the Oil Industry it is not uncommon to have "Named Contracts" where a list of names ie Engineers are named on the contract. This stops this dead.

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    3. NeilMc
      Reply Icon

      Re: Typical behaviour?

      Indeed having worked in Global IT Outsourcing and Consulting for over 10 years this practice is very common even in the mature markets; where do you think companies like Infosys got the idea from.

      Its a big race to the lowest price point or lowest common denominator across most industry sectors and countries.

      Along with the very passionate forum post about 18th century coal mine owners and haves and have nots; the other aspect that needs to be considered is Societies "rampant consumption" of all natural resources without consideration for how sustainable this practice is; Energy being the latest example.

      If we consume based on Wants and not Needs

      If we consume without a care for where the resources come from

      If we consume without questioning the sustainability of our behaviour

      If we fail to understand and act upon the laws of supply an demand

      Then we are sealing our own fete and that of future generations.

      Perhaps paying more for energy might be the catalyst for a behavioural change in Society?

      So should the Government take action on the Energy companies?

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    4. D.S.C.
      Reply Icon

      Re: Typical behaviour?

      This is known as the "Bait and Switch" technique.

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  8. dileepp89

    India will take US to the WTO on Infosys Visa Fraud case

    As a result of the US government’s $35 million crackdown on IT company Infosys, the Indian government is planning to re-instigate its complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) that America is unfairly hiking up visas fees for Indian workers. The American Bazaar reported.

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