To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Thu Mar 28 20:35:47 PDT 2013 It turns out that there is more to the story--worse, not better--about SendHub's foreign worker that I mentioned earlier today, in http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/UnfilledJobs.txt Recall that my posting was commenting on a Bloomberg News article, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-28/america-losing-technology-workers-denie d-in-visa-lottery.html Here is what I wrote: *************** ...the Bloomberg article...[is] nicely done, but there is an emperor-has-no-clothes aspect to it. Its star witness, Ms. Martinez Mortola, "manages customer support" and has "a master's degree in engineering management." Isn't something wrong with this picture? Presumably Martinez Mortola is doing a fine job, but what is so special about her work and her degree? As I often say, the vast majority of H-1Bs are ordinary people doing ordinary work. There are many Americans who could do Martinez Mortola's job quite well. Indeed, if her visa doesn't come through, her boss Garrett Johnson probably WILL hire an American. Or maybe not. A cynical view would be that the Americans who could do the job are not new graduates like Martinez Mortola, and thus would cost Johnson more money than he wants to pay. In this scenario, he'd just call USC back and say he needs another new grad who has OPT status. (Optional Practical Training, part of the F-1 student visa.) *************** It does indeed seem that Martinez Mortola is on OPT status. OPT is allowed for 12 months in general, and 29 months for STEM students (not for management degrees, apparently), Martinez Mortola's LinkedIn page says that she finished her USC degree in 2012. If that was in June, her 12-month OPT will be ending this June, just like the article implies. As you can see above, in my posting I emphasized that this case illustrates the fact that the vast majority of H-1Bs are ordinary people, doing ordinary work. The link below shows an example of what Martinez Mortola does at SendHub (remember, her name is Cristina): http://sendhub.desk.com/customer/portal/questions/756407-question *************** Cristina - SendHub Support Jan 21, 2013 06:42AM PST SendHub Agent Hi! Thank you for reaching out with questions - we'll be happy to help. The Free plan includes 500 messages perm month. Messages you send and receive will be discounted from your 500 available messages. We hope this helps. Please let us know if you have more questions, and thanks for checking out SendHub! SendHub Support *************** Are there really no Americans qualified to say, "The Free plan includes 500 messages per month. Messages you send and receive will be discounted from your 500 available messages"? That is absolutely ridiculous. If you plug "Cristina SendHub" into Google, you'll get lots of similar hits, plus this one about her party skills: http://blog.sendhub.com/post/31990501042/casual-friday-meet-community-support-superstar (Too bad Rob Sanchez isn't writing about H-1B anymore; he'd love this one. :-) ) The reporter, who did a good job with the article other than missing the glaring incongruity, was obviously fed Martinez Mortola's case by one of the industry lobbyists. Ironic that they picked such a poor example. Meanwhile, it turns out that Martinez Mortola's boss, SendHub cofounder Garrett Johnson, is exceedingly well connected on Capitol Hill. Before founding SendHub, he was an aide to Sen. Lugar and authored a bill on startup visas. He went straight from there to starting SendHub, and since that time has been widely quoted in the press on expansion of H-1B and other foreign worker programs. Oddly, though, I see no Careers section on SendHub's Web page. This is from a rapidly-growing company that that is desperate to hire? Johnson told KCBS on March 6 that 90 percent of SendHub's job applicants are "immigrants." (He means hope-to-be immigrants.) No surprise, if the company won't even advertise on its own Web page, and merely relies on the foreign-student grapevine to get the word out. I don't mean to pick on Ms. Martinez Mortola. But this situation is for-crying-out-loud outrageous. Is there ANY member of Congress, or President Obama for that matter, who believes that this type of job should be given to an H-1B instead of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident? Mind you, I don't approve of giving most engineers or scientists H-1B visas either, but to me this case shows how corrupt the legislative process has become. Norm Archived at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/SendHub.txt