The U.S. said it is "prepared to demonstrate to the court the manner in which the defendant's (Visions Systems Group, an IT firm in South Plainfield, NJ) schemes, along with similar schemes by similar companies have substantially deprived U.S. citizens of employment." The government then points out that "in January of 2009, the total number of workers employed in the information technology occupation under the H-1B program substantially exceeded the 241,000 unemployed U.S. citizen workers within the same occupation."
The U.S. government's brief doesn't explain to what extent fraud is responsible for tech worker unemployment, or cite sources for its data. Estimates of the size of the tech labor force depend on what government labor categories are included.
While I don't disagree in the least, it will be interesting to see where more information on the data the U.S. is using to make this case. Cases like this may be more prevalent thanks to an amendment to the recent stimulus bill U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) presented and helped pass requiring any firm receiving TARP money to meet a higher standard for employing H-1B workers by automatically categorizing those firms as 'H-1B dependent', a status which "include attesting to actively recruiting American workers; not displacing American workers with H-1B visa holders; and not replacing laid off American workers with foreign workers."
Although I am on record as not having a lot of faith in 'good faith' measures where it's already been shown to be a flawed approach (as in the H-1B program), I *do* like tying requirements to TARP money (just a shame they didn't tie bonuses to it as well...)
Maybe Obama should send some TARP money Microsoft's way as well...
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