Because HCL employed them, not UCSF.

A large percentage of H1Bs go to "bodyshops", which import workers from abroad to temporarily work at companies that are offshoring their employees. Yes, it's perverse; they are in effect being used to replace American workers, but not explicitly.

using H1B for 4 months stint is very strange. It is too valuable a visa slot (significantly oversubscribed lottery usually, at least in the recent years) to be wasted that way. Usually it is done using something like B1 for such a short trips, especially if it is training, etc. I wonder whether the journalists and others did mistake one visa for another, especially given that they naturally wouldn't be privy to such internal details of a 3rd party company like the HCL in this case.

I looked a little more and found this subsequent article talking about it:

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-vi...

My understanding is that H1-B's for some educational institutions (and certain affiliated non-profits) are cap exempt.

but they did get the benefit of cheaper IT workforce? What they did to their existing employees was certainly morally wrong but is outsourcing your IT support to cheaper third party seen as morally wrong too? Isn't that the idea of free captial market? Sure the state didn't get taxes from those employees but state owned university saved costs.

The H-1B program is not intended to give employers access to cheaper foreign labor. Its stated purpose is to allow people to immigrate when they can do jobs that US workers can't. When there are already US workers doing those jobs, that's clearly not the case. But that sort of abuse has been all too common.

The recent H-1B suspension probably goes too far the other way -- the program needs more safeguards against abuse rather than to be discontinued -- which requires a legislative solution (auctioning off the slots seems promising). But the legislators are apparently too busy flinging their own scat at each other right now because it's an election year. In the meantime it might not be such a bad thing to fail closed rather than fail open, given the effect of the lockdowns on the unemployment rate.

They did benefit from the cheaper workforce, in fact they saved 1.14 million dollars!

Wait

Oh no...

You say that as though 1.14 million dollars is a lot.

swing and a miss

Lots of people are brought from overseas on B1, J1, L1 whataver cheap visas and employed illegally. All these HCL-Wipro-Mahindra rent out whole apartment complexes in the areas where they have large customers; there these B1s are allowed/forced to live on cheap.

The H1B system is totally out of wack. One of the many things that we need to tear down and rebuild from scratch in 2020.