Companies that hire Indians are ‘curry dens' and ‘slumdog sweatshops'. ‘Indiots' and their housewives “...masquerade as software testers… employed by their husband's contacts or in firms they work at!!”.
That is a glimpse of what some bloggers have to say in support of 18 ex-employees of US healthcare-services company, Molina Helathcare, a client of Cognizant Technology Solutions, who are alleged to have been replaced by H1B workers from India.
The 18 ex-employees have filed a lawsuit in a US court against Molina. They alleged that on January 14, a day after the US Department of Labor approved Cognizant's application for 40 H-1B workers, Molina fired 40 programmers, security analysts and managers. Reports quoted a Molina spokesperson saying that “…this lawsuit is without merit”.
jobs crisis
The comments come at a time when the US is facing a jobs crisis. Most of these, therefore, target not just Indians but US authorities and courts, too.
“…The courts hate Americans and esp. white Americans. They side with “minorities” every time since if they don't, the minorities scream RACISM! and sue the courts — and win,” says a blogger.
Another one calls for wider action. “Can't every American techie from scores of firms all over the country like IBM, SUN, Oracle affected by this practice over the last decade join in the lawsuit to see if the practice and business model is illegal?”
Yet another blogger hopes that if there were “…hotlines where H1-B fraud could be reported IT unemployment would be reduced by 80 per cent in a few months if properly enforced esp. in areas like Virginia, N.J, Atlanta, Texas, Cali ....”
The most spine-chilling comment of them, posted on July 25 (after the carnage in Norway), says: “By 2011 now the wipe-out is almost complete... some H1-B's have got greencards and the model is firmly in place to replace American jobs with the likes of Infosys, Cognizant etc with IBM leading the charge… So either the ‘laws' or the practice or the Business Model has to change to salvage something for the American techie.
“This should be done by re-examining these practices or one can always look across the Atlantic to Norway for a radical way to deal with the enablers of this phenomenon!!”