Slashdot Mirror
Indian Hustle: How Fraudsters Prey On Would-be US Tech Workers
New submitter angel115 points out this article on the widespread fraud committed in India against many thousands of those seeking visas to work in the U.S. Many Indian techies rely on the services of visa brokers (or people who claim to be), and end up burned by the transaction. From the article: "Some are lucky enough to get a visa — only to find that the promised job in the US doesn’t materialize. Then the visa holders are forced to return to India after spending thousands of dollars just surviving. ... No official figures are available for the number of frauds in India, but an unclassified document released by Wikileaks showed that in 2009, US consular officials cited H-1B scams as one of the two most common fraud categories in India." Another interesting detail: As part of a U.S. government investigation, "Officers investigated 150 companies in the city and discovered that 77 percent 'turned out to be fraudulent or highly suspect.' ... Officials uncovered a scheme where Hyderabadis were claiming to work for made-up companies in Pune so the Mumbai consulate would be less suspicious about their applications. 'The Hyderabadis claimed that they had opened shell companies in Bangalore because "everyone knows Hyderabad has fraud and Bangalore is reputable,” according to the internal communiqué [later published by Wikileaks]."
Can't They just live and work in India? . There is ample opportunity in India waiting to be tapped. The very first time I saw a US visa applicants queue at one embassy , I decided never to be a part of this . No wonder the Americans are fed up of all these fellas . And whats worse is they form the Indian stereotype in the US . Many who have made the H1 B or whatever seem to believe that they have achieved some "higher ground" by working in the US . I can't get it . I value fellas who write good shell scripts more than these " yum bee yea's " .
The misery doesn't end if they actually get into the US with a job. Once they apply for a green card US law requires they work for the same company for 7 years. The contracting companies use this to their advantage. I've seen friends being delayed given documents needed to prove how long they worked. I don't know all the details of what they go through, but I've heard enough to not want to hire from certain companies again.
Poor Indian technical workers... yet there are many Americans without jobs. Taking a risk coming to the US for a job? I guess they don't realize they will work in US I.T. sweatshops.
Yes, am sounding insensitive to folks in India. However, am sitting on the other side, where my company has moved all Sys Admin and Database Admin overseas. Posting Anon to keep my resume hopes up. When the f*ck are we going to wake up and take care of our country? Folks collectively spend billions getting the degrees and experience, only to get jobs at Walmart; where they can't even pay their student loans. To top it, we continue to support FB, Google, M$ and others who continue to push for underpaid H1V1 visas...
Jobs are moved to another country because of economic incentives. That is the essence of capitalism ... to seek efficiency through a free market. How can you mix up the profit motive with some mishmash of patriotism and insecurity ?
I lived in China for a while and similar scams were common there. I remember having to explain to a friend there, a trained nurse, why paying around $1500 up front for a company that said they would get her a Canadian visa and a (huge by Chinese standards) salary around $1200 a month. It was not an immigration visa that would let her stay long term, but a domestic servant visa for a live-in job caring for an Alzheimer's patient.
The Canadian embassy had warnings on their web site that 'visa consultants' were unnecessary since you could do everything yourself, and in particular that anyone claiming to have "connections" to make a visa more likely or quicker was lying.
Who is it that supports immigration controls, exactly?
If you have no immigration controls then you will essentially have a situation where people will move to other countries speculatively. This will put a vast strain on resources like education, and so on. You also need to decide how you are going to handle out-of-work benefits, and historically courts have often differed in decisions on entitlement from what the government intended (how do you deal with a family with one foreign born parent - and are courts going to decide that the same must apply to an extended family with one Western born child?). Even if you make a draconian decision that no benefits can go to any family with a foreign-born member then if you have no restrictions you could end up with shanty-towns on the edge of every major city, increased crime rates (most people will do something rather than starve if the minimum wage job that would be a fortune at home doesn't come arround.
Then there are terrorists. Granted three are many peaceful people in India; Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians, and Agnostics, but they also have a large number of Muslim terrorists. You can be sure they'd see an open door policy as an invitation to attack the west.
Correct me if I misunderstood something here but these people are trying to commit visa fraud themselves. They are paying a company for the purpose of getting a visa just so they can get into the country to look for a job with other companies in the US and transfer their visa. They know that these are shell companies that will not actually employ them.