3 Employers paid some aliens as independent contractors, a violation of the H-1B program. In other instances, the aliens petitioned to employ themselves. The OIG found numerous instances of phony businesses set up to allow aliens to enter on H-1B visas. 5 Job shops abuse the system and workers. These body shops typically treat workers as indentured servants, giving the alien enough money for living expenses and keeping the rest as a fee.
Employers also abuse workers through the use of non-performance agreements.
Typically these entail the payment of a large sum of money in return for allowing the alien to seek work with another employer. The use of Temporary Workers harms wages for American workers. Because the prevailing wage standard is not enforced, employers can simply replace more expensive American workers with cheaper foreign labor. An audit by the California Employment Development Department discovered substandard wages, tax cheating, and under the table payments. 7 Professional workers must now contend with the same conditions that manufacturing employees began facing two decades ago.