President Donald Trump's aide and the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the US Department of Justice, Harmeet Dhillon, spoke about her department's action against the discrimination of Americans in US jobs. Speaking to Texas journalist Sara Gonzales, who busts alleged H-1B abuses on her show, Dhillon said she used to call the IT bodyshops 'software pimps' when she was working in Silicon Valley. Dhillon explained the economy of IT bodyshops or staffing companies that bring H-1Bs from overseas and then place them with clients. These staffing companies, she said, often trade these H-1Bs within themselves because they can't sponsor all of them, and she called it a 'human trafficking' operation.
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Dhillion said there are three to four middlemen who are getting their cuts from what a company is paying an engineer and hence the H-1B workers are getting way less salary and sometimes no salary. The last middleman is probably paying nothing to the engineer but the engineer can't protest because if they lose their jobs, they lose their visa and would be deported.
"Silicon Valley body shops specialize in faking up resumes. Some people might be extraordinary but a lot of this is fakery. And on top of that, these people are subject to restrictions on moving jobs, have lower salaries, don't have economic mobility, and can be exploited. It is a toxic situation, plus the job market excludes Americans," Dhillon said.