The “Dragon Lady” and Friday H-1B Visa Fraud

(By the way, I also posted over here today.)

This Yahoo tech story tells us…

San Francisco - A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] study, H-1B Benefit Fraud & Compliance Assessment?? published in September but just coming to light this month, found a 27 percent rate of fraud in the H-1B visa program.

The study, conducted by The Office of Fraud Detection and National Security [FDNS], drew 246 cases in a random sampling of the 96,827 "approved, denied or pending I-129 petitions" for employment of a non-immigrant worker filed between October 1, 2005 and March 31, 2006. Employers hiring IT professionals under the H-1B visa program must fill out an I-129 petition as well as an LCA [Labor Condition Application].

“A 27 percent rate of fraud,” huh? Nice.

Examples??...

…there were instances where "the employer failed to pay the beneficiary at least the prevailing wage for the particular occupation in the specific geographical location as noted and attested to on the (Labor Condition Application, or LCA) filed with the Department of Labor."

Another violation that was considered technical was the employer charging back to the petitioner the filing fees the employer was obligated to pay, according to the regulations.??

The study said this practice had the effect of "lowering the beneficiary's wages to less than the required prevailing wage."

The most blatant misrepresentation cited by the study was in a case where the H-1B visa worker "was performing duties that were significantly different from those described on the LCA and I-129 petition."

In this particular case, an IT professional hired as a "business development analyst" was found to be "working in a Laundromat doing laundry and maintaining washing machines."

I’ve heard of “scrubbing the code,” but that’s ridiculous (ba-dump!).

And this site, Joe’s Union Review, contains information about Cisco, for example, advertising a job that was only available to offshore workers (no naturalized Americans need apply).

And in response, Senators Charles Grassley wrote this letter to Jonathan Scharfen, the head of the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Service last week (I’ll keep an eye out for a reply, but since this is Bushco, I’m not holding my breath).

And though Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (pictured above with hubby Mitch McConnell – and by the way, to help Bruce Lunsford, click here) isn’t really the bad guy here for a change, it is helpful I believe to recall once more that she hasn’t lifted her little finger to do anything preventing the flight of jobs from our shores (which, as noted here from last November, is based on the utter fiction that we aren’t graduating enough math and science majors in this country).

And finally, I think it’s important to note the following from here…

(Barack) Obama also has co-sponsored legislation that would give "Patriot Employers" a tax credit equal to 1% of their taxable income if they maintain or increase the ratio of their U.S. workforce to the number of workers abroad, keep their headquarters in the USA and meet other wage, health care and pension requirements. "We can end tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and give those breaks to companies that create good jobs with decent wages here in America," Obama said last month in Lorain, Ohio.

And what does John W. McBush say in response (here)? “New education, retraining, new economy, blah blah blah” (sorry, but I’ve heard that broken record before).