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H-1B Audit Stirs More Controversy
A recent audit of the H-1B visa program by the Department of Homeland Security appears guaranteed to intensify the controversy surrounding the program. The report details an alarming pattern of fraud, forgery, non-existent business entities and sometimes, "multiple technical violations." The audit was conducted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services arm of the DHS, at the request of Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. The USCIS sampled 246 cases from a total of nearly 97,000 approved, denied or pending petitions between October 2005 and March 2006. Out of the 246 cases, USCIS found 51 cases, or nearly 21 percent, were either fraudulent (33 cases) or had technical violations (18 cases) -- defined as violations ranging from failure to pay the stated prevailing wage to placing the employee in a location other than the stated place of employment. Some cases had more than one technical violation associated with the petition. The report, released earlier this fall, does not name employers or applicants, but extrapolates the percentage of sampled cases to arrive at an estimate of nearly 20,000 cases out of the original cases selected in the six-month timeframe that would likely have been fraudulent or had technical violations. For H-1B visa critics, such as Grassley and Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the audit is proof that the system needs a massive overhaul. "There's not enough oversight by Homeland Security to make sure the program works," says Grassley. "Any program that has 20 percent fraud in it -- or people coming in not for the purpose they were intended to be brought in -- there's something wrong." Grassley and Durbin introduced legislation in 2007 that is designed to curtail abuses in the H-1B visa system, says Grassley. He adds that he doesn't expect the bill to be voted on until next year, as part of a comprehensive immigration overhaul debate. Included in the Grassley-Durbin bill are mandatory annual audits -- which are not currently performed by the USCIS, according to a spokeswoman for DHS. "That doesn't mean that we haven't done spot checks, and that we haven't done assessments and haven't suspected fraud and worked to eliminate that," says Chris Rhatigan of the DHS. She adds that the department is implementing new procedures to help tighten loopholes, such as increasing site visits to verify the presence of a petitioner's business address. "It's not just that we go and look at the petitioners for a pending job," she says. "We look at the current jobs and the current workers, and we do unannounced site visits to determine whether the worker is doing the actual work as reported on the petition." Grassley says his and Durbin's legislation would increase accountability of DHS to prevent abuses, as well as assist American workers by mandating that, before companies seek H-1B visas, they "make a real, good-faith effort to make sure that they hire people already here in America." Robert Meltzer, CEO of Chicago-based VISANOW, an online-based immigration law service, says the audit reveals "some pretty shocking stuff." "I think there is a problem with the H-1B program," he says. "I think [DHS] really [needs] to find out where the fraud is, and really try to attack that particular issue." He disagrees, however, that the Grassley-Durbin legislation will increase opportunities for American workers. Because the legislation is likely to add further restrictions to the program, Meltzer says, he thinks American businesses are likely to suffer, because of unfilled positions. Instead, Meltzer suggests, the H-1B program should evolve with the times. The current form of the H-1B visa program began with the Immigration Act of 1990, and although much has changed in the last 18 years, the H-1B program hasn't. "Look what's happened to the global economy," he says. "It's changed so much and had so much impact in the United States." Rather than "throw the baby out with the bathwater," he says, the program should be updated to reflect the changing economy.
November 17, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
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