Whistle-Blower Claiming Visa Fraud Keeps His Job, but Not His Work

[alp227]

Julia Preston, New York Times

It has been 17 months since Jack B. Palmer first made a quiet complaint through internal channels at Infosys, the giant Indian outsourcing company he works for, saying he suspected some managers were committing visa fraud. Since then, Mr. Palmer says, he has been harassed by superiors and co-workers, sidelined with no work assignment, shut out of the company’s computers, denied bonuses and hounded by death threats.

But what has driven him nearly crazy, with bouts of depression alternating with rage, Mr. Palmer said, is the silence. Since last April, Mr. Palmer has been stewing day after day in his home near Montgomery, Ala., contemplating a blank Infosys screen on his computer and agonizing over whether his whistle-blowing was worth it.

“They did the worst thing they could do to someone who is used to working 80 hours a week,” Mr. Palmer said. “They sit me at home and cut me off from everything. My life is floating in Infosys purgatory.”

Mr. Palmer’s experience since he filed his first report in October 2010 alleging misuse of business visitor visas for Indian workers is a cautionary tale about the perils of confronting a big corporation. Mr. Palmer’s travails have been compounded because he is in a small minority of Americans employed by the huge company, which has $6.8 billion in annual revenues and about 15,000 employees in the United States alone, most from India.

(...)

A lawsuit Mr. Palmer filed against Infosys in February 2011 prompted federal prosecutors in Plano, Tex., where the company has offices, to open a criminal investigation that is still expanding. Federal investigators are looking into whether the company used workers from India for certain kinds of jobs here that were not allowed under their temporary visas, known as B-1. They are also examining numerous irregularities in the company’s hiring practices and documents, federal officials said.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/us/whistle-blower-claiming-visa-fraud-keeps-his-job-but-not-his-work.html?pagewanted=all

[dogknob]

1. After NYT became laptogs for the Bush Dynasty...

... I am skeptical of anything they print. They have a long way to go in redeeming themselves. Maybe this is a start, maybe this is convenient PR. We'll see...

[saras]

2. Trying to keep a whistleblower in their old job is stupid, anyways.

It only works if the whistleblowing results in an immediate purge of the guilty parties in the business. Otherwise it pretty much never continues to be acceptable employment.

I think we need a law that gives them something like a witness protection program, with guaranteed income.