In early May of this year, USCIS finally released the H1B application lottery for fiscal year 2024.This year, about 781,000 applicants competed for the annual quota of 85,000 H1B visas, the highest number ever.
The overall success rate this year was14.6 percent, according to official data released by the Immigration Department.
If we put the numbers together over the past few years, we get the following chart of the cliff fall success rate:
However, we can see from the data thatout of these 750,000 applications, about 410,000 registrations were from duplicate applicants, and the remaining 350,000 were from applicants who submitted only a single application.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Tech Companies Are Colluding to Cheat H1-B Visa Lottery, U.S. Says In the report, we found the following:
USCIS data shows that some of the increase was natural, but a larger portion of the increase should be attributed to applications filed by multiple companies with the same name. A large number of duplicate applications are submitted by a small number of companies. About 96,000 people submitted multiple visa applications, for a total of about 408,000.
Although it is not technically illegal for foreign workers to have multiple companies submit visa applications on their behalf, the companies submitting the applications must prove that they would offer genuine work to the employee concerned if they won the visa. If the company that obtained the visa then quickly outsourced the employee to a third party, or fired the employee on the visa so that they could switch companies, then this could constitute fraud.
The government declined to name the companies involved, citing that they were under investigation. People familiar with the matter said the companies were mostly small in the technology and information technology sectors, and some of them may have been formed specifically to submit duplicate visa lottery applications.
A USCIS official said the companies have been referred to federal law enforcement agencies for possible criminal prosecution. Although some of those duplicate applications may have been selected in a lottery conducted by the government last month, officials want to revoke the visa if the applicants improve their chances of winning the lottery through fraud. The official said that if enough applications are rejected, the administration may conduct a second round of lottery to reach the 85,000 visa quota set by Congress.
In response to visa fraud, USCIS has made some small changes and proposed some new programs since 2022.
For example,in 2022, USCIS added a new section “unfairly increasing chances of selection” to the H1B registration page on its official website, which clearly states that it is illegal to participate in multiple selection with information that is not the real position;
In 2023, USCIS proposed a bill to increase the H1B registration fee from the current $10 to $215 in an effort to increase the cost of the lottery and curb the practice of multi-draw, but the bill was not approved.
In the same year, U.S. senators proposed the bipartisan H1B and L1 Reform Act to overhaul the existing work visa system and clamp down on the abuse of the H1B lottery system by various outsourcing companies, including the ICC.
Today, a user saw the information on reddit and posted in the forum: USCIS began to deal with the illegal H1B smoked! Refusal + lifetimeban:
The owner said that one Indian employee who worked in the top 500 in the world had applied for a number of H1B lots. This person has a fortunate 500 company offer, and this offer is, of course, real. The rest are fake offer, from bag companies that draw lots.
Last week in Delhi, India, he was questioned about his relationship with one of them, apparently under investigation. He was banned from entering the United States for life. Moreover, he participated in the lottery last year, not this year, so it can be seen that the US government investigation will go back to previous years.
It appears that some shell companies offering fake lottery services have been targeted, and the US government has already launched an operation, making it easy to find the full list in the database.
Which companies are on the list? One of the reddit posts replies:
Under the USCIS law against fraudulent lotteries in the United States, the person being prosecuted has the right to legal defense, which is somewhat cumbersome for the USCIS. However, it is very easy to refuse the visa through the embassy. Foreigners do not have the right to enter the United States and can not appeal if they are refused.
Like those involved in the findream, the US government imposed heavy penalties! The man in this case was barred from entering the United States for life, even though he had a real, Fortune 500 job offer.
Will it be traced in the United States? I believe it will. The United States government will not fight visa fraud simply by refusing visas at embassies.
Findream Case Review:
In 2019, a Chinese woman in the Bay Area used a shell company set up in Silicon Valley to carry out large-scale visa fraud, and was prosecuted in Chicago by the Federal Department of Justice, which involved as many as 1900 visa fraud people, most of them are students from Chinese Mainland.
The woman, Weiyun “Kelly” Huang, is accused of using the federal government’s Optional Practical Training (OPT) program for international students to commit F-1 visa fraud.
According to reports, Huang Weiyun opened a shell company in Mountain View, “Findream,” the company’s website claims to be an IT consulting company, providing knowledge training, website design, data analysis, programming services and business consulting. Just be able to and a lot of international students hot professional on the number.
But the indictment says it was a shell of the company and a tool used by the defendants to defraud. FBI investigators found that even the employee photos were downloaded from the Internet.
And the company’s registered address is only a shared office area in Moutainview city, the building’s receptionist once revealed that people rarely see the company inside.
In other words, the company has no actual office space and no main business.But this is one company that hires more people with F-1 visas than even large companies at the rank of Facebook or I.B.M. Between 2003 and 2017, Findream was the tenth largest employer of any U.S. company, with about 1,900 F-1 holders listing it as an OPT employer, according to immigration records.
Not only in the United States, earlier there is a Vancouver Chinese unlicensed immigration consultant Wang Xun, accused of fraud for thousands of clients, was sentenced to 7 years in prison, and fined more than 900 thousand yuan, also involved in hundreds of Chinese immigration qualification review and even be repatriated.
In a foreign country, many people have to work hard for a legal identity, and counterfeiters, by taking all kinds of shortcuts, seemingly save a lot of time or energy, in fact, behind the danger, if you want to stay in America for a long time, must be legal!
Finally, it is hoped that the vigorous investigation of the relevant departments can also provide a fair and real environment for the H1B lottery.
