According to allegations made by federal prosecutors, two tech executives in San Jose, California, imported foreign H-1B visa workers to hold American jobs they were not legally authorized to have in the United States.
Namrata Patnaik and Kartiki Parekh have been charged with visa fraud and conspiracy to commit visa fraud after discovering a job outsourcing scheme that imported and delivered foreign H-1B visa workers to other unscrupulous employers, at an excellent profit for the two accused.
The federal indictment stated that Patnaik and Parekh were higher-ups at PerfectVIPs, a company that designed computer chips. Breitbart News reports, “From 2011 to April 2017, prosecutes allege, Patnaik and Parekh filed 85 fraudulent H-1B visa applications to import foreign workers only to then lend them out to other employers whom they were not authorized to work for.”
Once the Government approved the H-1B visa worker applications, Patnaik and Parekh effectively created a pool of foreign workers to lease out to other employers for a specific monetary value. According to the Department of Justice, foreign visa workers authorized to take American jobs at PerfectVIPs must remain at PerfectVIPs. By lending them out to other companies, the two accused broke U.S. immigration law. The DOJ adds;
This practice provided PerfectVIPs an unfair and illegal advantage over employment-staffing firms. During the period of Patnaik’s and Parekh’s conspiracy, the indictment alleges, the other employers paid fees of nearly $7 million to PerfectVIPs to cover the cost of the H-1B workers’ wages and salaries as well as a profit markup for PerfectVIPs.
According to the DOJ, Parnaik and Parekh are due to be back in federal court in April and face a maximum of 15-20 years in prison and thousands in fines each if they are convicted. However, these charges, a representation of the state of H-1B programs in the U.S., come as President Biden expanded corporations’ ability to outsource thousands of high-paying American jobs to foreign visa workers.
Breitbart adds some context, “In fiscal year 2021, the top six H-1B visa employers — Cognizant, Amazon, Tata Consulting Services, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook — sought to outsource nearly 57,000 American tech jobs to foreign H-1B visa workers primarily from India and China.”
Additionally, nearly all of the job-saving H-1B restrictions put in place by President Trump under his tenure have been canceled or reversed by Biden and his top DHS officials; in fact, the current administration has even allowed corporations who were denied H-1B applications under President Trump to reapply.
For more on the story, please visit Breitbart News.
