tompaulco's Journal: Business travel required: Employee pays travel costs

I got another amusing job solicitation the other day. It was for a medium length (6 month) contract in Connecticut. It looked like something I could do, so I responded that I was interested. They sent me a contract to sign prior to being presented to the company. When I looked at the contract, it stated that I would be an employee of the company, and that I would be responsible for all travel, relocating and living expenses. Now that is just completely unreasonable. Can a company really expect someone to up and move their family every 6 months at the whim of the company? Or since it is a short term assignment, does the company expect it's employees to eat $45,000 a year in travel expenses? Sure it's all tax deductible, since it is a business expense and is required in order to maintain employment. But tax deductible is not substitute for money in the wallet.
The other funny thing was that about half of the document was related to H1B status. I'm a citizen. I can work here. That's about all you need to know. But there were all these other questions about H1 status and whether I'd be willing to transfer my H1B to this company and so forth. My guess is that I will never hear from this company again, because they are only interested in hiring H1Bs. I am thinking that they are looking for H1Bs because H1Bs are more willing and able to relocate since many times they have no family ties here. As such, the H1Bs would be more willing to take a small apartment for 6 months at a time in a new locale. Also, they can afford to have tens of thousands of dollars shaved off of their wages for company expenses, since they are not trying to raise a family.
To a certain extent, they seem to meet the letter of the law by offering a competitive wage to H1b and citizen alike. However, the fact that they make the employee pay the travel expenses puts the job below the competitive wage, and thus it is illegal to give that job to an H1b. Also, if a citizen and an H1b are in competition for the same job, I believe it would be illegal to offer the job to the H1B unless he had specific jobs skills which were required by the job and that the citizen did not have. And then finally, I have to wonder how a company can actually offer jobs to H1Bs that are already here anyway. My understanding is that you can only hire an H1B if you offered a competitive salary and got no takers from a citizen. Only then could you offer the job to an H1B already here or a potential one in another country. However, many companies seem to be skirting the whole concept of offering the job to the citizens first. I find this to be an illegal method of trying to save money by hiring offshore labor when there is labor here in the United States willing to work if given the opportunity.
Well, anyway, as I said, I doubt I will hear from that company again, as I am not an H1B, and so they probably view me as being too expensive. (But how can that be, since H1Bs are paid the same competitive wage as the rest of us? Ha!)
Luckily, the market continues to improve and it will be only a matter of time before I can laugh at the two companies that have so far treated me in a way most unappreciative of my years of experience.