Sun Hit With H1-B Discrimination Suit
from the discrimination-which-way? dept
We’ve discussed the issue of H1-B visas here a number of times – and I’ll repeat that I’m a strong believer that companies should be allowed to hire the best worker for the job, no matter what their country of origin is. In doing so, we help make sure that American companies remain competitive. However, plenty of people like to point out how the H1-B program is often abused, and my response is that any company that abuses the program should be brought forth and punished for misusing the program. With that said, it will be interesting to see with this new lawsuit against Sun, charging them with discriminating against American programmers, in favor of cheaper Indian programmers. If Sun really violated the rules then I have no issue with them being punished – but I think they’re going to need more proof than (as the article suggests) some quotes from one of Sun’s founders, Vinod Khosla that people from India “are favored over almost anybody else.” Khosla made those comments on 60 Minutes, and they sound rather off-the-cuff and not based on anything formal. More importantly Khosla doesn’t work at Sun any more, and left the company almost twenty years ago in 1984. I’m not quite sure how his knowledge of things from 20 years ago could be that relevant to this suit.
