A TECH CONSULTING FIRM
that has received government incentives while bringing highpaying jobs to Central Florida has been seeking non-U.S. workers for some positions.
A tech consulting firm that has received government incentives while bringing high-paying jobs to Central Florida has been seeking non-U.S. workers for some positions.
A subsidiary of Deloitte LLC has filed preliminary paperwork required for the annual H-1B visa lottery for foreign workers that favors its Lake Mary location, placing it second only to its primary address in Philadelphia. No other worksite in the state came close to matching the volume of requests of the Lake Mary location.
Based on preliminary paperwork filed by an immigration law firm on behalf of Deloitte Consulting in Lake Mary, the number of requested workers totaled about 10,000 from the federal fiscal year of 2017 through the first quarter of 2018. It’s unclear how many of those materialized into actual visas for foreign workers.
While it is not known what percent of the workforce in Lake Mary received an H-1B visa, Deloitte Consulting is a national leader in playing the annual visa lottery, among the top five companies in 2017.
Deloitte’s primary focus is hiring U.S. workers, a spokesman said in an email responding to requests for an interview.
“Nationally, we will hire thousands of U.S. workers this fiscal year. Our use of the U.S. visa program allows us to complement our domestic workforce with highly skilled professionals, many of whom are graduates from Florida’s local colleges and universities, to meet the needs of our business,” wrote senior manager of public relations Paul Dunker.
After the tech center in Lake Mary opened, hired 1,000 workers and retained the positions for a minimum of two years, it received $1.7 million in taxpayer money from the city and Seminole County in 2017. Now, more incentives are on the table – another $1 million for creating 850 additional jobs.
Deloitte’s capital investments are worth $14.2 million, with another $13 million in the second agreement. These are separate from the property owner’s own capital investments, and include rent, a new parking garage, interior buildouts and new equipment.
The mayor and the county commission chairman declined to comment.
The preliminary paperwork, known as the Labor Condition Application, does not cost anything to file with the U.S. Department of Labor, but it does state what Deloitte will offer for a starting negotiating wage, for which positions, and how many.
It is a rough indicator of where the company plans to hire or move H-1B workers, said public policy professor Ron Hira of Howard University and author of the book “Outsourcing America.”
“Some of the employers tend to file more than they end up with workers in those positions and that definitely has to do with the [lottery] cap and in some cases they're just anticipating if they have a possibility in putting people,” Hira said.
But he said the H-1B program should only be used as a last resort.
“It has effects on job opportunities for U.S. workers, and it also has additional impacts in terms of downward wage pressure for everybody in that area in those fields,’’ he said. “So it has a ripple effect, an amplifying effect that goes beyond just those individual jobs themselves and they're not using the program in the spirit of the intent of it, which is where there's a real true need.”
In 2015, 250 Disney IT employees lost their jobs to H-1B visa workers. The displaced workers were told to train their replacements, according to a lawsuit filed over the issue. In March, Sara Blackwell, the attorney who sued Disney threw in the towel, acknowledging the workers could not win the case. President Donald Trump has talked about reining in H-1B, but Blackwell accused him of not doing enough.
Public incentives to attract companies are not new to Central Florida. Companies have not been prohibited from hiring H-1B workers to receive them.
One of the two companies involved in the Disney outsourcing, Cognizant Technology Solutions, was also the largest recipient of H-1B visas nationwide based on lottery numbers in 2017. Cognizant received a tax break from Florida for creating jobs in Tampa: a maximum of about $2.5 million for 91 jobs followed by a separate agreement for a maximum of $225,000 for another 75 jobs.
The Deloitte Consulting salaries at Lake Mary were required to have an average annual base salary of at least $60,250 and the newest 850 positions of $70,056.
The H-1B has a three-year term and can be renewed once. However, renewals are not as easy since the Trump administration began enacting stricter standards. There are also 10-to-12-year-waits for H-1B holders from India if they apply for an employer-sponsored green card today.