Reply #44: Theory versus practice [View All]

[primavera]

Yep, that is the way it's supposed to work and that's precisely my point: the way it's supposed to work isn't that bad. Your contention is that it seldom if ever works the way it's supposed to. Well, I've not only been working with these kinds of issues for more than a week, I've been working with them for more than a decade; I've personally prepared more than 100 H-1B petitions and have worked closely wth colleagues who have prepared thousands more, and what I know from that experience is that most of the time the program works the way it's supposed to. Of course, there are exceptions, I don't pretend it works perfectly 100% of the time, nothing ever does and the H-1B program is no different. And I'll admit, my experience is somewhat selective in that I've worked exclusively with reputable places which generally don't engage in unethical practices, but of course, there are people who do. But for the most part, attorneys are a pretty conservative, risk-averse bunch of people who spend their entire lives worrying about all of the horrible things that could happen to them and/or their clients if they got caught doing something illegal, so you don't find many practitioners willing to go very far out on a limb. Which again is not to say that there aren't some abuses, but we're talking about a relatively small percentage of a group that wasn't even that big to begin with, and upon the shoulders of this small percentage of a small percentage, you're ready to dump responsibility for massive systemic problems with the US economy. And that's just not rational.

As for breaks, I was myself surprised to learn recently that US labor law does not guarantee workers any right to any breaks at all. Legally, an employer isn't required to give a worker meal breaks or even so much as a lousy bathroom break. Some states have laws extending such rights to employees, but you'd be surprised how few do, and federal law contains no requirement whatsoever with respect to breaks:

"Federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks. However, when employers do offer short breaks (usually lasting about 5 to 20 minutes), federal law considers the breaks work-time that must be paid. Unauthorized extensions of authorized work breaks need not be counted as hours worked when the employer has expressly and unambiguously communicated to the employee that the authorized break may only last for a specific length of time, that any extension of the break is contrary to the employer's rules, and any extension of the break will be punished.

Bona fide meal periods (typically lasting at least 30 minutes), serve a different purpose than coffee or snack breaks and, thus, are not work time and are not compensable." (http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/workhours/breaks.htm)