Cisco, Google Benefit From Indian Firms' Use of H-1B Program

Cisco Systems Inc. applied for nearly 3,000 H-1B visas in fiscal year 2016, with the intent of hiring people to work on its sprawling, purpose-built campus in the San Jose suburb. These were good jobs - many of them for managerial level logistics and operations research analysts - and paid well. The average annual salary was about $ 120,000. At the top end, the company plans to pay a "senior corporate strategy director" $ 197,000 a year.

But these applications do not tell the whole story of how Cisco planned to use the controversial visa program to complement its workforce. Visa applications submitted accounted for only 40 percent of applications from 2016 for temporary visas for jobs that will be located at its headquarters. The rest were presented by IT companies, mostly from India, seeking to place workers in the company - about 250 companies in all. The only indications that Cisco had anything to do with these applications were the addresses listed as the place of employment, a fact that is not included in the aggregated statistics on H-1B applications published by the Department of Labor. Silicon Valley companies do not mention workers employed by contractors, also known as the contingent labor force, in discussing how they use the program, which means that the image they give is incomplete.

Cisco's use of the visa program has been the subject of public attention over the years as its executives have pushed for its expansion even during multiple rounds of layoffs. The company eliminated 940 jobs at its headquarters in 2016, and 390 more so far this year.

Not all applications resulted in a new job at Cisco - less than a third of the applications for all industries in 2016 were accepted. However, as a whole, applications show that Cisco is more dependent on the H-1B program than it was previously recognized, and that the company uses it in a way that has not been fully understood. Contractors did not apply for visas to cover the type of high-level jobs that Cisco was seeking for itself. Instead, almost all of these visa applications were for jobs that require little or no specialized knowledge. Average wages for those positions were approximately 25 percent lower than jobs that Cisco directly solicited.

"Like many large companies, Cisco works with contracting firms to place highly skilled contract-based workers," Cisco said in a statement. "While we believe it is critical to ensure that highly skilled workers can come to the United States to work and innovate, the vast majority of our contingent workforce are US citizens and permanent residents. Committed to fair market Take into account the immigration status ".

Contractors are also filing many applications for foreign visas to work with other major US technology companies, according to a recent analysis of Labor Department records covering eight large technology companies between October 2015 and October 2016. The Applications submitted by contractors accounted for half of H-1B for jobs at the headquarters of PayPal Holdings Inc., 43 percent of those on the campus of Microsoft Corp., 29 percent at the headquarters of EBay Inc And about a quarter of those of Googleplex. On Facebook Inc., contracting companies filed 12 percent of job applications at their headquarters. According to the analysis, Apple Inc. hardly depends on contractors who employ workers through the H-1B program for its headquarters staff, and Amazon.com Inc. does not seem to use them at all. Contractors include Infosys and Wipro.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company does not directly handle the jobs described in the applications, but that the company only works with reputed partners. In an e-mail statement, an EBay spokeswoman said the company uses contingent workers to increase the flexibility of its operations. "We work with expert agencies to provide qualified and qualified contractors for a variety of technical functions, some of which may hold H-1B visas. All workers, whether permanent or contractors, must pass the EBay background check To begin the work. "He wrote, adding that the company regularly reviews the personnel companies with which it works. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet declined to comment on the data. PayPal did not respond to incoming requests