Recently, abuses of the H1B visa program and its negative impact on American workers have been making headlines, particularly as American IT workers and computer engineers are replaced by cheaper white-collar workers from India.
However, another program, the L-1 visa, is being similarly exploited by recruiters and companies to obtain low-cost labor from India, but it is not as well-known or widely written about.
The L-1 visa allows multinational companies to transfer employees from foreign offices to their U.S. operations. There are two types: L-1A for executives and managers, and L-1B for workers with specialized knowledge.
Unlike H-1B visas, L-1A visas have no annual cap and no wage requirements, making them even more attractive to employers seeking to import cheaper foreign labor.
Indian nationals have dominated L-1 visa issuance for decades, rising from 4.5 percent in 1997 to 43.8 percent in 2006 and reaching 80.8 percent by 2011.
Because the L-1 program has no numerical limits, wage requirements, or labor protections, companies have used it to bypass the stricter rules of the H-1B program, which is capped at 85,000 approvals per year and requires wage and specialty-occupation verification.
The L-1A allows firms to transfer so-called executives or managers into the United States without proving they actually perform managerial duties, and many companies have used this loophole to replace American workers with lower-cost foreign labor.