Foreign Workers Learn Skills, Then U.S. Jobs Move Overseas

H-1B visas have also been used to bring in temporary foreign workers from outsourcing companies, mainly from India, who study the jobs of Americans and then teach employees of those companies overseas how to do them. The jobs are then moved abroad.



For four weeks this spring, workers from the global outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services, or TCS, shadowed employees at the headquarters of Toys “R” Us in Wayne, N.J., taking screen shots of computers and detailed notes on how they did their jobs.

By late June, the TCS workers had produced thorough manuals for the jobs of 67 people. They then returned to India to train TCS workers to take over and perform those jobs there. The Toys “R” Us employees in New Jersey, many of whom had been at the company for more than a decade, were laid off.

This fall, the New York Life Insurance Company also laid off workers, and before they left, they were required to teach foreigners on H-1B visas how to do their work, so that the jobs could be moved out of the United States. One accountant said a worker from India made an exact digital “recording” during the day as he performed his job. At the close of business, the recording was sent to India, where workers practiced mimicking the accountant’s tasks.

“It’s all just repeating exactly what we have been doing,” he said.