Hi Ashok !
I am currently based in India and have been offered an H1B employment in the US. In the employment agreement, there is a clause which says that I have to pay $X if I leave the company's employment before 18 months.
Is this clause legally valid? And is it normal in the US to ask for such commitments? This clause is certainly legally valid both in India & US, because you are allowed to change employer as long as the new one agrees to fill the petition for you, this is designed of course to prevent an unique employer to have too much power on you. So don't fight on this point, you would loose. As the company takes a financial risk for you can change company easilly, they may ask for compensation, logical and certainly legal.
But what bothers me much is the fact they offer you an H1B while they are no longer available in practice for about 5 years (for H1B is valid for up to 6 years and older ones are simply renewed), this seems to mean this indian company got a pool of H1B visas by advance, or worse gathers still valid H1B visas of leaving employees and use fake documents to lurk INS so they believe you are the right visa owner. Now that all H1B are attributed on 1st october, they simply CANNOT LEGALY offer you an H1B, it is totally IMPOSSIBLE (unless it is for next year october 2005, but I doubt much they are willing to pay you 11 mounths for nothing untill you can legally have it).
So I recommend you think much about it, this is certainly a visa fraud which could cost you much unless you can prove this company is responsible. Depends how much vigilant INS will be in near future.
In all I believe
you should consider this : are the jobs ads which remain unfullfiled fake or not, so is there a real lack of qualified manpower in IT field on US soil ? This is the only point, as for about 5 years US companies CANNOT HIRE ALIENS ANY LONGER because of H1B quota still renewed for existing ones, and other visas are totally irrelevant for this case. So if shortage of qualified IT professionnals in US is real this may be a great opportunity for you, unless immigration law change but this remains very unlikely. If this shortage is real and you want to work in US you should accept, if not avoid it like pest. Don't forget to consider that an US job right now for an alien will be very unpleasant with low pay and no consideration for a high cost of living, for there are too many available jobless workers so situation is very bad right now. If you are indian a job in india is much better anyway for you that any US job, it simply depends on the price you are ready to pay for working in US. Perhaps it will go much better, but working in US right now for an alien without a GC is probably the worst option anyway.
Best regards.
Eric LEMAITRE
CNAM IT Engineer, MS/CS (RHCE, RHCX, SCJA, SCJP, SCJD, SCWCD, SCBCD, SCEA, Net+)
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