Feds Arrest 11 People in IT Visa Fraud
This has been going on for so long, yet no one would do anything about it. It's about damned time:
February 13, 2009 (Computerworld) Federal agents on Thursday said they arrested 11 people in six states in a crackdown on H-1B visa fraud and unsealed documents that detail how the visa process was used to undercut the salaries of U.S. workers.
Federal authorities allege that in some cases, H-1B workers were paid the prevailing wages of low-cost regions and not necessarily the higher salaries paid in the locations where they worked. By doing this, the companies were "displacing qualified American workers and violating prevailing wage laws," said federal authorities in a statement announcing the indictments.
Employers are required to pay H-1B workers prevailing wages, but those wage rates can vary significantly -- by tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the region. How many U.S. workers may have been displaced was not detailed by federal authorities.
The arrests were carried out by federal, state and local agents working in Iowa, California, Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and New Jersey. The government's action "is the result of an extensive, ongoing investigation into suspected H-1B visa fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy," said Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, in a statement. The investigation was dubbed Operation Pacific Vision.
The H-1B workers were also victims, according to the federal indictments. Some were hired for jobs that didn't exist. One worker from Pakistan who arrived in the U.S. for a programming job, for instance, ended up with a job pumping gas.
Hopefully more arrests are in store.
The red state zombies and republican walking dead, need a full dose of how corrupt and anti american the Bush fascist government was. Maybe after a couple of years of exposure, they will begin to understand just how badly they were screwed by their repuke hero's.
But then I think about my wingnut brother-in-law, and maybe it won't make a dent.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
It's not that the GOP is anti-=American...
It's that cheating on anything, anytime you get the chance, IS the "American Way."
Think steroids...
Steroids don't put millions of American workers in the poorhouse!
Republican's (and Clinton - Mr. NAFTA) did.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Steroids just costs fans millions of $$ as they help pump up the price of tickets to see the freaks.
Let's see how far to the right they go before they fall off of the edge of this flat world.
i am a baseball fan...i dont feel cheated by ped's
i do feel cheated by the owners and the mlb, who stuck taxpayers with millions, forcing them to shell out to build millionaires, baseball stadiums
at least the sf giants did it right
obama's chief of staff played a major role in passing nafta too.
http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2008/11/obama-...
which initially were true trade agreements, and over the bush years became excuses for more outsourcing
trade is good
free trade is good too
but when the other nations didnt uphold their parts of the bargains, the agreements needed to be revisited
there is no reason why we cant sell our stuff in china...except for the fact that china has kept their tarriffs....and we havent
"The H-1B workers were also victims, according to the federal indictments. Some were hired for jobs that didn't exist. One worker from Pakistan who arrived in the U.S. for a programming job, for instance, ended up with a job pumping gas."
I'm sure there are many more just like this one.
The people who planned this scam need to be arrested. Jailed and then, well, I'll let you decide the rest for yourself. Me? I'd send them to work in the jobs that they sent these people to do. The ones they actually gave them. And pay them the same wage.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
This sounds suspiciously like the modus operandi of those plotters who bring over Asian girls for respectable jobs, only to put them to work humping me for pay.
Look a little closer, and you'll probably find it here too.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
U.S. federal agents actually investigating PERPs (allegedly) and not dissenters? What IS this country coming to.
Still, I dream to someday see the FBI raid the Crawford faux ranch but if that ever happened future Preznit club gatherings would be awkward and we MUST have comity instead of justice.
I pump gas for free
It's called Texas chili, with extra hot picante sauce and jalapenoes.
I've seen cows keel over in a faint.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
You'll get a tax slapped on your ass.
H1B Visa Top Sponsors in Mathematics, Math & Physical Science
For at least the last 20 years American salaries for mathematicians have been stagnant or declining because employers can more cheaply hire foreign labor by using the H1B Visa Program.
This is no way to encourage High School or Post-Secondary students to embrace mathematics as a profession.
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
MM23, have you seen this ad, Americans Fired, Foreigners Hired?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMKlMrwc6AA
Why, here's one of the perps now:
http://www.jameskelsey.net/images/cousin_it.jpg
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQRlmCNC5XE :-)
Study the symptoms not the virus...
Let me get this straight. A foreigner gets paid the prevailing wage; meanwhile, an American gets paid the minimum wage.
they bring in foreigners to do the crappy jobs.
The cost and time involved to get a green card is so bad that I actually got a member of the USCIS to admit to me that he could not explain, nor justify the cost, the wait and the incompetence of his fellow USCIS employees.
For one form, the I-485, you have to pay a $1010 fee to have a piece of paper stamped "approved."
Almost every form you send to the USCIS costs you $300.
And if they tell you something will take 6 months, figure 2 years.
The whole thing is a farce.
Although I'm always glad to see criminals caught, H-1B fraud isn't the main cause of what's been driving wages down in the IT field. Remember that the annual cap on the H-1B category is a mere 65,000.
Admittedly, not all H-1B nonimmigrants are subject to this annual cap.
H-1B nonimmigrants who are employed, or who have received an offer of employment, by institutions of higher education or a related or affiliated nonprofit entity, as well as those employed, or who will be employed, by a nonprofit research organization or a governmental research organization are exempt from the cap.
There is also an H-1B Advanced Degree Exemption, which makes available 20,000 new H-1B visas for foreign workers with a Master's or higher level degree from a U.S. academic institution. For each fiscal year, 20,000 persons who hold such credentials are statutorily exempted from the cap.
Reference: http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuit...
Edit so as not to appear insensitive to the problem and to provide context for the 65,000 figure above:
2006 BLS statistics show total number of computer engineers, systems analysts and programmers employed in the U.S. at 2,634,000.
http://www.cpst.org/IT-1.pdf
I saw the list of names in the second page of that article , but its not clear if they were the people importing the H1-B people, or if they were the H1-B's themselves (I hope it wasn't the latter , kinda harsh to be "arrested" when you have no control over what's been done to you)
.....That it was business owners who were arrested. From the names I'd further guess that they were relatively small businesses, and not companies like IBM or GE who bring in thousands of foreign programmers and engineers.
Well, whaddaya know, Americans ARE willing to work IT jobs for peanuts...now. Another "mission accomplished" moment for BushCo.
I just saw a little scene on "24" (I think it was that show), where an IT worker is told to do some kind of computer search and he comments that they could get a temp for $14 an hour to do the same thing. I was amazed -- is that really all they're getting in D.C.?
i shoulda turned in my ex employer who pulled the same shit
this has been going on for years
Capitalist motivated crime should always be punished by the death penalty. It is the only way to stamp put the capitalist-Republican evil infecting the United States,
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