H-1B Lottery Rigged? Indian-American Accused, Denies Involvement

New Delhi: The biggest foreign worker employment policy in the United States, H-1B visa lottery scheme, is being rigged by staffing and outsourcing companies, Bloomberg reported.

As per the report, in 2023, as many as 446,000 people sought H-1B visas and only about 85,000 were available. The explosive report further adds that over 11,600 visas went to multinational outsourcing companies, with vast overseas employees that flood the lottery with entries. Another 22,600 visas went in the kitty of IT staffing firms.

Collectively, nearly half the H-1Bs in Bloomberg’s analysis went to outsourcing or staffing companies and as its probe exposed that many of them exploited the policy by submitting multiple entries for the same worker.

How the rigging of the H-1B Lottery System works

The report by Bloomberg is based on the data from 2020 to 2023. The investigation stems from a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. The probe revealed how certain staffing firms have ingeniously exploited the H-1B lottery system through a practice known as "multiple registration."

This tricky strategy involves submitting multiple entries for a single person to increase their chances of getting a visa — a manipulation the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) characterizes as “fraud”.

The report indicates that about 15,500 visas, or roughly one in six visas secured last year, were obtained fraudulently.

In a particular case, an operator of a staffing company utilized up to a dozen companies to submit the applicantion of same people as many as 15 times, securing hundreds of such visas depriving others of one.

The USCIS seems to be unable to enforce regulations effectively, raising concerns over the agency’s enforcement capacity.

Indian-Origin Kandi Srinivasa Reddy Linked to Racket

Bloomberg findings linked an Indo-American Kandi Srinivasa Reddy with the rigging racket. As per report, Reddy shifted to US in early 2000s and got a master’s degree. In 2013, he launched his own firm named Cloud Big Data Technologies LLC.

Reddy's operation included submitting multiple applications for the same person under names of different companies, maximising their chances of securing a visa through lottery system.

The report revealed that Reddy controlled several entities, including Cloud Big Data Technologies LLC, Machine Learning Technologies LLC, and others with similar names and overlapping addresses.

These firms allegedly made numerous entries for the same workers, resulting in over 3,000 entries in total and securing hundreds of H-1B visas since 2020.

Notably in one year, Reddy's firms secured over 300 successful H-1B applications, a significant rise in visa from previous years.

Further, the report claimed that after getting an H-1B, Reddy’s company rented the workers on contract to corporations such as Meta Platforms Inc. and HSBC Holdings Plc.

The company's advertisements claimed that it collected 20% or 30% of the worker’s salary, an amount that could reach $15,000 or more each year for a typical worker.

All About H-1B Lottery System

Due to overwhelming demand for H-1B visa, USCIS switched to a lottery sysytem which was originally designed to allocate the visas on a first-come, first-served basis with a cap of 85,000.

Each year, the lottery draws random names from the list of applicants, which has nearly doubled in recent years, minimising the chances of securing a visa.