H-1B issues hit Telugu community hard in US

Vijayawada: The H-1B issue has hit the Telugu community hard in the US. After a bitter experience with the US Citizen and Immigration Service (USCIS), the NRI youths from AP have started returning home. The state government started worrying over the matter after a young boy boarded a flight back to India a week ago. The Vijayawada youth’s laptop and hard disk were seized by USCIS. In case the USCIS established that his H-1B was fake, he would have to undergo a minimum imprisonment of five years or pay a fine of $1,25,000 as penalty.

An NRI living in Dallas shared a few astonishing facts about the young technical graduate. The youth on his way back to India is a graduate who had shown some seven years’ experience at age 23. He is now under the scanner of USCIS. His laptop, hard disk and other documents have been taken away by the USCIS team. If H-1B details are found fake in the hard disk, he will have to face charges as per US law, the NRI explained.

This, the Dallas resident noted, is not an isolated case of someone coming under the influence of body shopping companies, most of them having their base in Dallas. The NRI also felt that such young graduates may not return to the US in case they were found guilty in the USCIS investigations. In this context, he urged the AP and Indian governments to keep an eye on the investigations over the H-1B body shopping companies or agencies that are on the prowl and indulging in the unethical practice of deceiving the youths from India.

“It is high time for the AP government to react, as around nine companies are already under the scanner of the USCIS, in the Dallas IT companies consortium,” he said.

IT companies’ consortium is busy taking precautions:

The IT companies’ consortium responsible for the MoUs programme in the US city of Dallas has taken maximum precautionary measures to arr-est the leakage of information related to its ac-tivities and about the USCIS’s scanner on the Indian-origin companies. The Indian origin companies have been pulled up by the Trump administration, following dete-ction of the fake H-1B visas episodes that have taken place in the last couple of years. Many Indian youths, especially from AP and TS, have been reportedly trapped by body shoppers, firms floated by Andhra-origin NRIs in the US. The same is being evaluated by the USCIS.

It is learnt that out of the 65,000 H-1B visas iss-ued every year, around 9,000 are processed by body shopping agencies of Andhra origin, wherein a lot of manipulations are allegedly taking place, according to the observations of several AP NRIs. In fact, the young generation NRIs who have settled down in Dallas and other areas of the US and engaged into body shopping have different opinions about the ongoing developments. “All the body shops are not of a fraudulent kind and they do not engage themselves in unethical practices,” an NRI, who actively participated in Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s recent Dallas tour, observed. He was confident that such investigations of USCIS would not show an adverse impact on the existence and continuance of the Andhra-origin body shops.

He has indirectly indicated that anything can be managed there also. But, according to a senior NRI’s observation, the US laws are stringent and if they register cases against the accused in H-1B issues, the minimum imprisonment is five years. “Is it necessity for our AP youths to get H-1B visas through unlawful means,” he asked, and added that the reputation of the state and the country will be at stake in case the body shopping agencies are allowed to continue with such unethical practices. However, unacceptable activities are taking place in the H-1B visa issues, and these are prompting agencies like USCIS to put a scanner over the activities of body shopping agencies. So far, neither the APNRT nor the IT companies’ consortium has released the list of those companies and agencies who have entered into agreements with the AP government, in Dallas.