NEW YORK (AFP) — A US medical staffing firm has been charged with violating a foreign labor program after it allegedly owed almost three million dollars back wages to its Filipino workers, the labor department said Tuesday.
The New York-based Advanced Professional Marketing Inc. (APMI) and its president, Marissa Beck, were charged by the department with violating provisions of an immigration law that authorized employers to bring non-immigrant workers into the United States under the H-1B program.
An investigation found that 156 H-1B guest workers from the Philippines, employed by the company primarily as physical therapists in hospitals and other medical facilities in the New York metropolitan area, were owed almost three million dollars in back wages, the department said in a statement.
The department sent a "determination letter" enumerating the results of the probe on March 11, assessesing penalties totaling 512,000 dollars for the alleged violations by the company.
It also directed the company and Beck to return the owed wages to the workers.
The duo could request a hearing on the issue before a US Labor Department administrative law judge within 15 days, the statement said.
The H-1B program permits employers to temporarily hire foreign workers for jobs in the United States in professional occupations such as computer programmers, engineers, physicians and teachers.
H-1B workers must be paid at least the same wage rates as are paid to US workers who perform the same types of work or the prevailing wages in the areas of intended employment.
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