Republican candidates blasted the so-called H-1B guest worker program at their debate on Thursday, with Donald Trump calling it “very bad for our workers” even as he admitted to using such foreign employees. “We should end it," he said.

But the H-1B program is so embedded into the U.S. economy that even the Labor Department — an agency whose mission is to promote the welfare of American workers — has at least three foreign guest workers doing information technology work at its Washington headquarters, POLITICO has learned. And the agency has approved applications for several more, as have other arms of the federal government.


Created to fill highly skilled jobs for which qualified Americans could not be found, the H-1B program has lately been used by staffing agencies to supply corporations with low-cost, trouble-free labor. To qualify for visas, the employer must attest that the guest workers "will not adversely affect the working conditions of workers similarly employed," according to the application from the Labor Department, which administers the program in conjunction with the State Department. The employer must also promise that the workers will be "afforded working conditions on the same basis, and in accordance with the same criteria, as offered to U.S. workers." Critics of the program say the Labor Department enforces these provisions spottily at best.

The H-1B workers cleared to perform work at the Labor Department's Frances Perkins Building on Constitution Avenue provide a range of IT services, including software consulting, system administrating and network engineering. Some of them, however, are classified as “Wage Level 1” employees, a classification usually reserved for workers with limited experience.

H-1B workers have become so ubiquitous that the conservative news site Breitbart reported gleefully this week that the Clinton Foundation had several work there. When Breitbart asked whether the foundation was still hiring such workers, Clinton Foundation personnel officer Vena Cooper said, "We do." A modeling agency owned by Trump is being sued by a Jamaican fashion model who says she was promised a $75,000 salary but, after she arrived on an H-1B visa, received less than $4,000 during the three years she was on contract. "This model just didn’t have a successful career," an attorney for Trump Model Management told Reuters, "and we fully expect to win." (Modeling, though it would fit few people's definition of skilled labor, is shoehorned into the H-1B program as a "specialty occupation.")

Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state oversaw the guest worker program, favored raising the cap on H-1B visas when she was in the Senate but has taken a more wary stance since the 2008 housing crash.

The Labor Department's role in bringing H-1B workers into its headquarters is a bit murky. The department's Employment and Training Administration last year approved visa renewal applications from at least five firms — Cybecys, Knowcean Consulting, Comprobase Inc.,Data Aixsys Inc. and HCL Global Systems Inc. — for IT work at the Perkins Building, according to publicly available records. Not all of those approvals necessarily resulted in the placement of H-1B workers there. But Cybecys confirmed to POLITICO that it had at least three H-1B guest workers installed at the agency. “Yes, they’re H-1B,” Cybecys President Harish Vajja said. “We go through a preferred vendor that won the contract. They’re being used for mainly software development.”

The other companies that filed H-1B visa renewal applications for Labor Department workers did not respond to email and phone requests for comment, and the Labor Department declined to confirm the presence of any H-1B workers. It's not certain the department was aware of their presence before POLITICO inquired about it.

"The Department of Labor has significant and numerous IT systems to assist with carrying out its programs," the agency said in a statement, "and, as with other federal agencies, the department sometimes hires contractors to assist with maintenance and operation of those systems. ... Provided that contractors meet the legal requirements, they may choose to utilize the H-1B program."

The data on H-1B workers cleared for work at the Perkins Building was culled from publicly available documents at the Labor Department known as Labor Condition Applications. Geoff Rhodes, a South Carolina attorney for an IT services company, designed a computer program to extract this information from the agency and shared his findings with POLITICO.

For months, Rhodes has publicized the use of H-1B workers in federal government agencies via his personal Twitter account , repeatedly asking the Labor Department, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about them. Rhodes, who prepares and submits LCAs and H-1B visa applications, said he tries his best to get those applications right, but feels frustrated that others are more lax.

“Just finished downloading data for all FY 2015 LCAs filed for addresses within 10 miles of @USDOL 's zip,” Rhodes tweeted in January. “Lots of federal contractors. #H1B”

“The more I look at this data, the worse it looks,” he later tweeted . “I don't understand why no one at @USDOL cares.”

LCAs are only the first step in the visa application process. LCAs certified by the Labor Department are forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department for final approval. More LCAs are certified by the Labor Department than are ultimately approved. But the LCA process “is a critical step, because this is where employers make key attestation to ensure that American and foreign workers are protected,” said Howard University’s Ronil Hira, an H-1B expert who is highly critical of the program for its lax standards.

Employers pledge in LCAs that they are satisfying the visa process by not displacing American workers or paying H-1B workers less than the prevailing wage, but that system has come under bipartisan scrutiny for weak oversight and enforcement.

In addition to presidential candidates Trump, Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders, Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have said the program is prone to abuse.

Contractors seeking work at the Labor Department all attested that the H-1B workers had salaries at or above the prevailing wage for their job classifications and their geographic area. The prevailing wage is defined as "the average wage paid to similarly employed workers in a specific occupation in the area of intended employment," according to the Labor Department. But some of the reported salaries were significantly lower than the average wage that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for similar workers in Washington.

For example, two visa renewal applications from Comprobase and and Data Aixsys for systems administrators slated to work at the Labor Department headquarters listed annual wages of $61,714 to $65,000. But the mean wage for a systems administrator in the Washington, D.C. area would be $96,680, according to a POLITICO analysis of BLS data .

Five of Cybecys's six applications reviewed by POLITICO showed Cybecys to be using the lowest wage classification for the workers, Wage Level 1. "The thing about the H-1B program,” said Rhodes, “is that it is intended to give employers a way of bringing skill sets to the U.S. that are hard to find. I understand that someone with minimal experience (Wage Level 1) could have skills developed through school or something. But that type of worker should be the exception in the H-1B world.” Cybecys declined to comment on why it sent Wage Level 1 workers to the Perkins Building.

According to Labor Department standards, Wage Level 1 employees “perform routine tasks that require limited, if any, exercise of judgment. These employees work under close supervision and receive specific instructions on required tasks and results expected. Their work is closely monitored and reviewed for accuracy.” Examples of positions for Wage Level 1 employees, according to the Labor Department, include “research fellow, a worker in training, or an internship.”

Howard University's Hira expressed concern about the agency’s use of contractors because all of the firms listed above, excepting Knowcean, are so-called "H-1B dependent" firms where more than 15 percent of the U.S. workforce is on H-1B visas, he said. Usually, those firms are subject to stricter standards for visa certification, but such companies can avoid heightened scrutiny if workers make more than $60,000 or have a relevant graduate degree, according to the Labor Department's Wage & Hour Division.



Labor groups like the AFL-CIO have coordinated with Republicans and Democrats to tighten the rules governing the H-1B program, even as other Democrats and Republicans urge Congress to expand the program, which is prized by tech firms.

“There are mainframe-sized loopholes built into the H-1B program's design,” Hira said in congressional testimony last year, "and a complete disinterest on the part of multiple administrations in enforcing the current rules, however weak they may be.”

Alexander Bastani, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 12, which represents Labor Department employees, suspects that more visa workers are housed within the Labor Department. “I’m actually surprised it’s that small,” he told POLITICO when presented with the LCA data. “I honestly still doubt that it’s that small. I think that’s just the data you were able to get. Obviously that’s a biased opinion.”

The BLS, which is housed within the Labor Department, may also be making use of the program. Rhodes says there were at least 13 LCAs for visas there. Rhodes’ data also show that companies have sought visas for workers at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. courts.

The U.S. government does not collect or report information about its use of H-1B workers. “The problem is they don’t keep this data,” Bastani said. “I would be interested to see how many H-1B workers within 50 miles of the Capitol ultimately do federal work.”