Congress leader from Telangana’s Adilabad constituency Kandi Srinivas Reddy has come under investigation for allegedly manipulating the H-1B visa lottery system in the US. Reddy founded Cloud Big Data Technologies LCC in 2013, through which he allegedly manipulated the US lottery system to obtain more than 300 H-1B visas.
Reddy, who calls himself a son of a simple farmer, earned a master’s degree in the US and started working as a technical consultant. During this time he settled in Dallas. According to a Bloomberg report, Reddy’s firm started looking for technical employees who needed H-1B visas to stay in or go to the US, and recruited people to do this work. Not only this, the recruiters were offered up to $8,000 per person. According to the report, after obtaining the H-1B visa, Reddy’s company used to keep these employees on contract with companies like Meta Platform Inc and HSBC Holdings PLC.
This is how Reddy used to manipulate the lottery system
General Counsel Jonathan Wasden said that staffing companies are actually the flexible power of the IT industry, which the industry needs. Without this, you cannot work easily in the American business and technology industry. Wasden said that during the Trump administration, a change was proposed in the H-1B lottery system, through which the required information was made easy by filling a small online form and paying a fee of $ 10. Due to this, various companies including Reddy made multiple applications for the same person in the name of different companies. Due to which their chances of selection increased significantly.
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Reddy’s Cloud Big Data submitted the names of 288 employees in the 2020 lottery system, while other companies it controls also submitted multiple entries with similar names. In total, more than 3,000 entries were submitted, leading to more than 300 H-1B visas being awarded in 2020, with 54 visas being awarded in 2020 alone, far more than any previous year.
Reddy made this claim
According to Bloomberg, Reddy claimed that he was only a registered agent for the companies and did not play any major role in them. However, he has made different claims elsewhere. He told Texas officials that he is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cloud Big Data. But according to the report, documents filed with the Election Commission in India and business records in the US show that Reddy or his wife own or control all the companies. Apart from this, last year, during the election campaign, Reddy described himself as the founder and CEO of several staffing companies. He also took the responsibility of giving employment to hundreds of people.
What does Reddy’s lawyer say?
Reddy’s lawyer, Lucas Gerritsen, argued that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) did not follow proper procedures to prohibit this activity and did not have evidence that Reddy’s companies broke the rules.
Reddy contested the election from this seat
Despite these allegations, Reddy founded a foundation to help farmers in India and started his own media outlet. Not only this, Reddy also contested the election from Adilabad constituency in Telangana, but he lost. Let us tell you that the US Citizenship and Immigration Service has now changed the lottery system. This reduced duplicate applications.
Staffing firms commit fraud
According to Bloomberg, staffing firms commit fraud for H-1B visas. In fact, staffing firms are also known as “body shops”. They work like visa brokers. Current and former employees of staffing firms told Bloomberg that they charge fees from employees for visa applications, provide incorrect information and violate labor laws. But complaining about this can put the employees’ visa at risk.
How are these companies protected?
Most of the criminal charges for H-1B fraud in the past decade were against staffing firms, but Reddy’s companies were not involved. The ITServe Alliance, which represents staffing firms, defends these companies as essential to the US economy, the report said.
Source (PTI) (NDTV) (HINDUSTANTIMES)