US companies are using temporary visas to ship jobs abroad

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-companies-shipping-jobs-abroad-using-temporary-visas-2015-9

Matthew Speiser
Sept. 29,2015

Some US companies are using temporary visas to train foreign workers in the US and then ship them back overseas, according to a new investigation by The New York Times.

According to The Times, the companies — which include Toys R Us and New York Life Insurance — bring foreign workers into the US to train them on jobs held by those at home offices in the US.

Then, once the worker has learned how to do the American employee's job, the American employee is laid off and the foreign worker returns to his or her home country and starts working from there.

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Most of these foreign workers were in the US on a visa program known as H-1B, which allows American employers to hire foreign professionals with "highly specialized knowledge" to meet their needs. According to federal guidelines, employers "must sign a declaration that the foreign workers 'will not adversely affect the working conditions' of Americans or lower their wages," The Times reports.

The American workers being laid off at Toys R Us and New York Life say the foreign workers did not have highly specialized knowledge. In addition, the Americans were instructed to teach the foreign workers how to do their jobs. If they refused, they were asked to resign.

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"At the very least, those are violations of the spirit of the law," Christine Brigagliano, a lawyer who advises companies on obtaining visas, told The Times. "Those contractors are signing on the bottom line, saying we will not undercut the wages and working conditions of Americans. But, in fact, they are."

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Check out the full report here»

[I am copying below some additional info manually from my copy of the Sept. 30, 2015 print edition of the New York Times, which I bought, so any typing errors are mine.]

Companies specifically named in the article:

Toys "R" Us
Walt Disney
Southern California Edison
New York Life Insurance Company
Cengage Learning, an educational publisher

Temporary H1-B visas are limited to 85,000 each year.

Those companies also use another temporary visa, the L1-B, which has no annual cap and allows businesses to internally transfer their employees who have "advanced knowledge" from branches in other countries to offices in the United States.

Those companies also use another