Today I was writing a spreadsheet for our payroll progam. While seeing if it was operational I noticed a bunch of people on our payroll. I went to the controller who couldn’t figure out why they were getting paid by our hotel when some of them hadn’t worked here in years and years.
H/R explained to us that their work permits only permitted them to work at our hotel not anywhere else. So they were working at other company owned hotels and we paid them and the hotel they are currently employed at reimburses us.
H/R said it is done all the time. But is this legal? I can’t find anything on the NIS website.
OK, I’ll assume that if they’re working in a hotel, they’re probably on an H2B. I never dealt with H-2Bs when I was working in immigration law, but I’d assume the rule was the same as it was for H1Bs: you can work in a different branch of the same company only if they’re still in the same general location as the company to whom the permit was issued. This is sort of nebulously defined, but anything above 50 miles away is almost certainly going to violate the rule. The whole point is that when the employer applies for the permit it does so on the condition that US citizen/resident workers cannot be found in that area to fill the job. So the employer can’t just send the worker off to a different area without first securing INS approval.
Interesting as these people are spead out all over the country.
Just seems that since we are the second largest hotel company in the states and it is widely done, it could explain how easily the terrorists could manipulate a system.