Post-CBS H-1B Whitewashing, another Fraud Indictment

CBS recently aired a “60 Minutes” H-1B visa segment that only hinted at this visa’s multiple inherent flaws. Since Congress created the H-1B as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, fraud in the non-immigrant, employment-based visa has been rampant.

A sampling:

• In 2013, the Department of Justice agreed to a civil settlement with Infosys, an Indian consulting and outsourcing firm, for $34 million. DOJ alleged that Infosys had abused the visa and placed foreign nationals in jobs that Americans should rightly hold.

• In 2015, DOJ indicted two Cupertino residents and two Sunnydale residents and charged them with participating in conspiracy involving visa fraud, mail fraud, obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

• In 2016, DOJ indicted a Virginia couple and four co-conspirators in a visa-for-sale scam that generated about $20 million for the perpetrators.

H-1B visa fraud continues unchecked – 37 years after Congress created it!

And on March 23, a federal grand jury indicted two Bay Area men on charges to commit visa fraud. The men, Jayavel Murugan, Dynasoft Synergy, Inc. Chief Executive Officer and Syed Nawaz, secured H-1B visas for about a dozen workers by claiming that jobs at Stanford University, Cisco Systems and Brocade Communications Systems awaited them. But there were no jobs. Instead, Murugan and Nawaz used the visas to import foreign nationals and place them in other companies.

Goldman Sachs estimates that about 900,000 to 1 million H-1B visa holders work in the U.S. And although normally associated with the tech industry, the H-1B can displace workers in any profession, especially white collar workers with college diplomas: pharmacists, teachers and nurses. See a complete list of vulnerable job categories here.

To American workers, the H-1B visa means one of two things. The H-1B visa could mean that an employed American will soon be displaced, and left with the difficult task of finding a new job. Or the H-1B visa might mean that a recent American science, technology, engineering or math graduate won’t find a job because of the H-1B glut that has created a loose tech labor market.

Please go to the CAPS Action Alert page here to ask President Trump to urge Congress to help him fulfill his campaign promises to reduce legal immigration and to protect American workers.