Every year, roughly 40,000 low-skill migrants cheat their way into the H-1B program to get work visas and jobs from Americans, Indian investor Vivek Wadhwa admitted to online host Mark Halperin.
“See, what happens is with every government program, there’s also corruption,” said Wadhwa, who was born in Delhi, India, and is now a famous investor in Silicon Valley. He continued:
First of all, you have people faking their resumes. So you have these body shops [white-collar staffing companies] who bring people in, and it’s cheap labor. So it’s a fact. It happens … Probably about 20-25 pecent of the people who come in on H-1B visas fall in that category.
“That’s a very high percentage,” of the 120,000 H-1Bs who arrive each year, Halperin responded. “I’d like somebody who supports the program to acknowledge this: that 25 percent are fraud. What’s the solution for that?”
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“Look at the applications very carefully,” Wadwha answered, saying:
First of all, you only give it to to companies that are trustworthy and reliable, not the body shops. This is where the problem happens. You got these body shops who bring them in, who make up resumes, who make up qualifications. The government isn’t going to validate every degree in every country.
The H-1B program keeps roughly 750,000 H-1B workers and spouses in U.S. jobs. Wadhwa’s estimate of “20-25 percent” suggests that roughly 170,000 of these Indian workers used fraud to take jobs from Americans.
Moreover, Americans’ wages are being pushed down by the population of roughly 1 million Indians with temporary visas who are allowed to stay and work once they apply for green cards. “The anti-immigrants rally against H-1B visas because they say that they suppress wages and they put Americans at a disadvantage, and I hate to admit this, but that does happen,” Wadhwa explained.
The traffic-jam Indians include the H-1B population, but also many with
. The change would allow a huge traffic jam of roughly 1 million Indian visa workers and their families to quickly get citizenship in the United States.“Here’s where the big problem is right now,” Wadhwa told Halperin. “I would not increase the number of H-1B visas. I would increase the number of green cards. There are more than a million and a half [Indian] people stuck in limbo, who are waiting for green cards. So they’re neither here, they’re neither there.”
U.S. companies gain from the large block of Indian contract workers who are waiting for green cards. The workers can be paid less than Americans, and be forced to work long hours, because they rationally fear being sent back to India.
But India’s government also gains as it moves more Indians into the United States. The migrants expand India’s clout in U.S. domestic politics, and they steer vast amounts of remittances and investment back into India.
But many millions of Americans lose jobs, careers, homes, prosperity, and access to the professionalism that provides ordinary Americans with trustworthy private and secure services, products, and innovation.