U.S. gov't study found 27% of H-1B visas for computer professionals were fraudulent

By Brad Reese on Wed, 10/15/08 - 12:25am.

Last month, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) released a study:

H-1B Benefit Fraud & Compliance Assessment

According to page 12 of the study:

"The most popular H-1B occupation also experienced the fourth highest rate of fraudulent conduct - computer-related occupations accounted for 42% (104 cases) of the sample.

"Among this sample, 27% (28 cases) were associated with some type of fraud or technical violation(s)."

Below is a table from page 13 of the study. The table shows occupations and the percentage of violations within each sector:

Page 8 of the study duly notes:

"The H-1B population from which the BFCA (Benefit Fraud and Compliance Assessment) sample was selected included 96,827 H-1B petitions.

"When applying the overall violation rate of 20.7% to the overall H-1B population, a total of approximately 20,000 petitions may have some type of fraud or technical violation(s).⁹

"If we extrapolate this number based on the 13.4% fraud and 7.3% technical violation rates found in the sample, this equates to approximately 13,000 petitions that may be fraudulent and approximately 7,000 petitions that may be associated with some type of technical violation(s).

"(9) The actual number of H-1B petitions with a violation may range from 15,500 to 25,600 (using a 95 percent confidence limit)."

IT companies are heavy users of H-1B workers, with Infosys and Wipro topping InformationWeek's top 100 H-1B employers of 2007 list (see InformationWeek's graph below). Cisco ranked 12th in that list. I have contacted Cisco for its comments on the government's study. I will update this blog if and when I hear back.

Cisco is requesting the cap on H-1B Visas be increased, do you agree with Cisco's request, given that significant fraud has been exposed in the H-1B Visa program?

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