How the University of California exploited a visa loophole to move tech jobs to India
Using a visa loophole to fire well-paid U.S. information technology workers and replace them with low-paid immigrants from India… Experts in the abuse of so-called H-1B visas say UC is the first public university to send the jobs of American IT staff offshore. That’s not a distinction UC should wear proudly… UCSF officials say the decision to outsource 97 IT jobs, about 20% to the total IT headcount, was forced on it by daunting economic challenges… The California Legislature has systematically reduced to pennies the state’s share of the budgets of UCSF and the rest of UC, which once was proudly supported by Sacramento. Meanwhile, Congress has consistently failed to close a glaring loophole allowing U.S. employers to send good American jobs overseas — instead, it has moved to expand the H1-B program at the behest of tech firms claiming, dubiously, that they can’t find enough good engineers in the U.S.
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by Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times.