Rep Rich McCormick, a Republican from Georgia, has written to the Trump administration that his district, Georgia’s 7th Congressional district, has become a suspected hotspot of H-1B visa fraud and that the administration should investigate. He said he would act as an interlocutor to help enable cooperation with state-level agencies and law enforcement. “Established by the Immigration Act of 1990, the purpose of the H-1B program is to allow American businesses to temporarily bring in foreign citizens to fill key, high-skill employment positions when the domestic workforce demonstrably cannot provide the necessary labor,” McCormick wrote.“Unfortunately, the H-1B program has become the subject of rampant fraud and abuse for the nefarious purposes of obtaining labor that bad actors can exploit below-market-rate wages and abusive work conditions given H-1B holders’ dependence on retaining their employment in order to avoid removal back to their country of origin. On aggregate, this trend interferes in the labor market by undercutting wages and increasing job competition for American jobseekers, particularly recent college graduates. Bad actors have developed illicit methods for meeting the requirements for obtaining H-1B visas and the necessary work authorizations, and they employ these methods at scale to enrich themselves through fraud and exploitation via the most threadbare compliance with the letter of the law.”“This phenomenon is plainly incongruent with the spirit of the law, and I suspect that it violates the letter of the law in many cases too. It further diminishes the American public’s trust and confidence in our nation’s immigration system and the rule of law while insulting those who faithfully abide by the letter and spirit of the law when immigrating to the United States. Failure to prosecute and stop this fraud and abuse will reduce the incentives that lead individuals to legally immigrate the right way and increase the incentive to take the fraudulent route,” McCormick said.The lawmaker said that he was concerned that his constituents were exposed to a particularly high degree of impact from concentrated H-1B fraud and abuse. “tro Atlanta’s recent economic growth and international airport unfortunately make it a logical area of concentration for these bad actors,” he said explaining why he thought his district became a hotspot of H-1B frauds.
