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