OPINION:
President Trump’s recent H-1B executive order is a necessary and welcome step in combating visa fraud.
The order, signed Friday, directs federal agencies to review H-1B applications more closely, particularly those from employers with recent or planned layoffs.
In a separate proclamation, the president renewed a $100,000 fee requirement for certain new H-1B applications, which is set to expire this month.
The aim of these moves is to strengthen oversight of the H-1B program and stop foreign workers from displacing American ones.
Legacy media have made much of a federal judge’s June decision to block the government from collecting the $100,000 fee on the grounds that it is illegal, but most outlets are not bothering to report on the apparent fraud that prompted the requirement and the executive order in the first place.
In August, accompanied by Blaze journalist Sara Gonzalez, Labor Department Inspector General Anthony P. D’Esposito went door to door in a Dallas office building linked to more than 500 approved H-1B visas. Not one of their knocks was answered, said Rep. Beth Van Duyne, Texas Republican.
“Basically, it was a front,” Ms. Van Duyne told Newsmax.
From the Labor Department’s Office of the Inspector General: “Many of the offices showed clear signs of inactivity: doors locked, lights off, and little to no evidence of active business operations.”
In July, Mr. D’Esposito announced that his office had issued subpoenas to multiple employers it suspected of H-1B visa fraud. Unsurprisingly, some of these employers have cried foul, as have other parties who contend that fraud is not a major problem among skilled foreign-born workers and rooting it out is not the best use of the inspector general’s time.
Yet the apparent Dallas scams, under review as part of a nationwide Labor Department investigation, are hardly outliers.
Last year, federal authorities found that half of Minnesota’s immigration cases, including H-1B visas, were fraudulent.
In April, two men in California pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud after the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services discovered that H-1B petitions the two had submitted were for positions that “did not exist.”
Earlier this month, USCIS found that a Florida H-1B visa petition had understated a job’s experience requirement — “listing two years when the end client confirmed more than seven were required” — in an effort to lower the offered wage by approximately $40,000.
We could go on, but you get the point. Fraud in the H-1B visa program is a problem, and the Trump administration is right to have developed a multipart plan to fix it.
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