Srikanth, Shashank

Senior, College of Computing and Digital Media

Majors: Computer Science, Data Science

Thesis Director: Jason Schneider, Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse

Faculty Reader: Susan Jacobs, Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse

Bio: Shashank Srikanth graduated from DePaul University in March 2021, double majoring in computer science and data science. He will be joining Amazon as a Software Development Engineer in June. He has a personal connection to the H-1B visa program, with his father being a former H-1B visa holder and a few of his relatives currently holding the visa. News about the H-1B visa program is scattered throughout and fall through the cracks; thus, he wanted to explore and bring to the spotlight the heinous exploitations of the program that are not known to the general public.

Abstract: The H-1B visa program allows employers to hire foreign workers on a temporary basis. The intent of the program is to aid employers to obtain necessary business skills and abilities that they are unable to acquire from the U.S. workforce by sponsoring the visas of qualified individuals. However, the program has been used by many companies to create an exploitable workforce. This paper will show that the employment-dependent H-1B visa program allows the employers to subject the H-1B workers through workplace malpractices, and that there are seven legislative actions that can be enacted by Congress to mend the visa program.