‘Runs on secrecy’: Tech consultants claim Walmart firings involve H-1B visa scandal

The American program to issue H-1B visas to overseas workers with so-called “expertise” unavailable in American workers has been mired in scandal for weeks and months already.

Now a report from a Swiss tech consultancy organization, CTOL, charges that a Walmart executive was dismissed and some 1,200 tech contractors were locked out of their programs because there had been kickbacks of up to $30,000 a day involved in the dealings.

Under the program, foreign workers are granted special permissions to work in the U.S. or for U.S. companies if they have qualifications and skills for technical jobs that cannot be filled by American workers.

The upside for corporations is that they have been shown to be essentially concealing their job postings, then claiming there are no available Americans, then going with overseas workers under contract who are paid only a fraction of what American workers would make.

The latest scandal to hit took aim at Walmart, with CTOL alleging 1,200 “technology contractors found themselves locked out of their systems, their access badges deactivated, their projects suspended indefinitely.”

The report, which revealed there was no confirmation from Walmart on the events, said the mass termination was because of a “corruption scheme that reached into the highest echelons of Walmart’s Global Tech division.”