Recently, several Indians in the U.S. were charged with H-1B visa fraud involving shell companies created to game the lottery system. In one scheme, three Indian-origin men ran a staffing firm called Nanosemantics that submitted petitions for jobs that didn’t exist.
In another, recruiter Kandi Srinivasa Reddy formed 13 shell companies and filed over 3,000 registrations for just 288 workers, charging desperate Indians thousands of dollars to become “employees” of fake firms with the promise of American jobs.
But the scam didn’t just defraud Indians. It also exploited Americans. To satisfy legal requirements, these shell companies had to demonstrate “good faith” efforts to hire U.S. workers first. That meant posting ads, contacting and interviewing Americans, and documenting rejections with plausible explanations.
This is why so many Americans report being aggressively contacted by Indian recruiters about jobs they never hear back from. Unwittingly, they’re providing the paper trail that enables visa fraud while the jobs are reserved for pre-selected foreign workers.
Anyone who has searched for a job online has probably encountered these recruiters demanding résumés, cover letters, and personal details without providing clear information about the job or benefits. In time, you learn to skip over postings with Indian-sounding names.
Indians dominate the H-1B visa program. In fiscal year 2023, 73 percent of approved H-1B workers were born in India, and between October 2022 and September 2023, Indian nationals received 72.3 percent of all visas issued.
Between April and September 2024, out of 130,000 H-1B visas granted, about 20 percent went to Indian-origin companies, with Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services leading.
Nearly 400,000 applications were approved that year, two-thirds renewals and one-third new. USCIS, however, raised concerns about fraud in the registration system: for FY 2024, there were more multiple registrations (408,891) than single ones (350,103), the first time this had ever happened.
After reforms were introduced, registrations dropped to 343,981 in FY 2026, a 26.9 percent decline compared with the previous year, suggesting that fraud prevention measures are taking effect.
Job seekers in the United States have long reported troubling patterns with Indian recruiters. Many describe being contacted by firms like Indotronix or Tanisha Systems, only to find that “nine out of ten” job requirements sent to them had nothing to do with their actual skills.
Despite submitting résumés, they never received interview requests or legitimate offers. Some workers discovered that the companies did not even exist.
Others noted recruiters often asked for unnecessary personal details, immigration status, driver’s licenses, even partial Social Security numbers, while sending emails riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. For many, the result is the same: information is harvested, but no job ever materializes.
The mechanics of the scam are clear. Recruiters gather résumés from U.S. workers to create the appearance of a hiring process, fulfilling the legal requirement that companies demonstrate a good faith effort to recruit Americans before turning to foreign workers under the H-1B or PERM labor certification process.
In practice, companies manipulate recruitment by posting jobs in obscure newspapers with tiny circulation, requiring outdated methods like mailing paper résumés, withholding key details from descriptions, or exaggerating the complexity of roles to make them appear as “specialty occupations” under H-1B criteria.
These tactics ensure few Americans apply, allowing corporate lawyers to argue that no suitable candidates were available.
Some companies even conduct sham interviews, rejecting applicants for pretextual reasons to show that “no qualified Americans applied.” Meanwhile, the real hiring process is already underway for preselected foreign workers.
The Department of Justice has reached settlements with major tech companies for discriminatory practices.
Apple was found to have failed to advertise PERM positions on its external website and required paper applications for roles that normally accepted online submissions, reducing applications from Americans while maintaining the appearance of compliance.
Similarly, a jury recently found that Cognizant had intentionally discriminated against non-Indian workers and was abusing the H-1B visa process. One executive testified that he was fired in 2016 after refusing to continue signing hundreds of fraudulent invitation letters for jobs that didn’t exist.
Outsourcing loopholes make the problem worse. The Department of Labor treats contractor hires differently from direct hires, allowing firms like HCL and other Indian outsourcing giants to sidestep wage and worker protections.
Banks, telecoms, and large corporations rely on these firms, which funnel thousands of foreign workers into U.S. jobs through staffing arrangements that crowd out Americans.
Recent analysis has shown that nearly two-thirds of foreign workers hired through these outsourcing models come from companies like Tata Consultancy Services.
Federal agencies now acknowledge these abuses are systematic. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has set up reporting channels for discriminatory job ads preferring visa workers over Americans.
The Department of Labor has begun prioritizing investigations and publicizing enforcement against violators. Between 2020 and 2023, Bloomberg estimates that one in six H-1B visas was issued through multiple fraudulent registrations, underscoring the need for reform.
Apart from the DOJ, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and other government departments have taken steps to combat these scams, but they persist. Fake job advertisements continue to clog the employment pipeline, leaving qualified Americans jobless.
The post Why You Never Hear Back from Aggressive Indian Recruiters: The H-1B Visa Scam Explained appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.