New Jersey IT Company Busted for Exploiting H-1B Cheap Labor Program, Must Pay $350,000 In Restitution
Richard Moorhead
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A New Jersey IT staffing and consulting company has admitted to abusing the H-1B foreign labor program, and will have to repay almost $350,000 in restitution to workers under an agreement reached with federal prosecutors on Tuesday.
Savantis Solutions is a longtime H-1B ‘chopshop,’ offering services within the American technology industry with the use of cheaper immigrant labor. They’re one of many companies accused of damaging the employment prospects of American workers through foreign replacements, who have little to no traditional employment rights under the conditions of the H1B visa and have been compared to indentured workers.
In Hudson County, New Jersey, just north of where Savantis is quartered, the employment of Indian-born software developers appear to have played a critical role is displacing American workers from the technology industry in the area.
Court documents reveal that Savantis failed to pay their H1B workers the legally required wages from 2014 to 2018, and unlawfully required workers to pay security deposits as a condition of their employment.
A Department of Justice press release summarizes its settlement with Savantis, revealing that the Middlesex County company will have to pay a total of $345,365 plus interest to current and former employees of the company.
Savantis has also agreed to retain an outside law firm to audit the company’s practices, and their compliance with American immigration law and existing H1B rules and regulations.
The H1B visa has largely been put on ice during the coronavirus pandemic, but it couldn’t be any more obvious that this program is devastating to American workers, and exploitative to the foreign workers who are essentially bound to unethical companies with greedy business practices. It’s time to abolish the obsolete H1B visa.
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