The government was “cruel” to deport roughly 200 Indian graduates who signed up for a no-show college so they could take good jobs from U.S. graduates by fraud, according to a tweet from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Warren said in a tweeted response to an article in the Detroit Free Press:
This is cruel and appalling. These students simply dreamed of getting the high-quality higher education America can offer. ICE deceived and entrapped them, just to deport them.
Warren’s ill-informed tweet is likely intended to help her compete for votes from very “woke” pro-migration Democrat primary voters. Those voters are also being wooed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has adopted a no-deportation, open-borders policy after a career spent opposing the investors’ use of cheap labor migration. Multi-billionaire investor Mike Bloomberg has adopted the same pro-migration stance as he enters the Democratic race.
In reality, the 200 Indians were following the path taken by hundreds of thousands of Indian graduates who are seeking white-collar jobs and citizenship in the United States, often via fake universities.
The victims of this Indian fraud are the growing number of Americans graduates who are denied good jobs in growing cities and are sidelined to low-prestige careers in regional cities.
The universities are the first step for many Indians because the last several presidents have allowed foreign students and graduates of U.S. universities to get work permits for the price of tuition fees. The work permit programs are the Occupational Practical Training program for graduates, and the Curricular Practical Training program for students.
The work permits allow the Indians to compete for the low-wage jobs offered by Indian managers at U.S. companies. Those jobs then allow the Indians to compete for coveted H-1B work permits, which allow them to apply for the hugely valuable prize of citizenship.
These jobs are varied, and range from starvation-wage jobs in Florida software sweatshops to up to $250,000 management jobs in Silicon Valley. The actual wages are difficult to track, partly because H-1B employers frequently shortchange their Indian workers and demand kickbacks. Indians are willing to pay the kickbacks because kickbacks are routine in India and because their U.S.-based Indian managers have the power to send them home or provide the hugely valuable prize of U.S. citizenship.
The growing number of legal Indian immigrants or visa workers is also attracting more illegals from India. The population of Indian illegals is now more than 600,000 people and includes a large number of visa workers who stayed after their visas expired, according to recent estimates.
Warren’s anti-deportation tweet responded to a report in the Detroit Free Press that said:
A total of about 250 students have now been arrested since January on immigration violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a sting operation by federal agents who enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to attend the school that marketed itself as offering graduate programs in technology and computer studies, according to ICE officials.
…
The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was located on Northwestern Highway near 13 Mile Road in Farmington Hills and staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials.
Out of the approximately 250 students arrested on administrative charges, “nearly 80% were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States,” the Detroit office of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) told the Free Press in a statement Tuesday.
In this case, the justice department is trying to jail several Indians who volunteered to recruit other Indians with promises that they could get work permits without spending any time at the University of Farmington, in Michigan. The other 2oo or so Indians who enrolled in the fake university are being deported.
OPT fraud is routine. In 2016, the Washington Post described the knowing fraud at the University of Northern New Jersey:
“In many instances, the schools are nothing more than sham visa mills,” [New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J.] Fishman noted. “They have no curriculum, no classes, no instructors, and no real students. These purported schools and their corrupt administrators simply give out I-20 [work permit] forms in exchange for payment. This illegal practice is known as ‘pay to stay’ because foreign nationals pay money to brokers and recruiters, like the defendants, to be enrolled in a school for the sole purpose of obtaining immigration status as a student — but with no intention of or interest in going to class or making any progress toward an academic degree.”
Parts of conversations between defendants and UNNJ “staff” make clear how transparent the alleged fraud was. Zitong Wen and Chaun Kit Yuen, for example, are two Chinese nationals residing in California now charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit. Their indictment said they contacted UNNJ in 2014 “to offer their services as recruiting agents for purported foreign students.” But the alleged conversations were a little unusual.
“You know that none of these people are going to class,” an undercover agent allegedly told Yeun. “[J]ust, you know, between us, you know, you’re good with that right? Make sure your clients are good with it too, okay? I don’t want anybody, you know, showing up at my doorstep thinking they’re gonna be in my … advanced calculus class or anything like that. … That’s not gonna happen, right? We know this is just to maintain status.”
The indictment reported Yeun laughed.
Roughly 300,000 foreign graduates are using the OPT program to take jobs. Another 750,000 foreigners are using the H-1B program to get white-collar jobs. In addition, foreign graduates also use the L-1, J-1, H4EAD, TN, and B-1 programs to take roughly 1.5 million white-collar jobs throughout the United States. The federal government also provides work permits to more than one million foreign blue-collar workers each year.
Overall, roughly 1.5 million foreign graduates hold white-collar jobs in the United States. That number is double the 800,000 Americans who will graduate in 2019 from four-year colleges with skilled degrees.
The huge number of Indian visa workers has also ensured that fraud, caste politics, and bribery are increasingly common in workplaces that were once dominated by white-collar professionals. For example, many U.S. professionals report anonymously that Indian managers only hire Indians and refuse to hire the Americans who cannot be trusted to stay quiet about kickbacks. Some of these complaints are documented by a growing number of lawsuits against Indian managers in U.S companies.
The legality of the OPT program is being challenged by a lawsuit from the Immigration Reform Law Institute. The lawsuit has prompted a huge pushback from billionaire investors, including Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. The program is important to investors because their stock values rise by $25 billion whenever they can use India’s workers to push payroll costs down by another $1 billion.
The OPT program is also supported by the Indian government, which pressures legislators and U.S. investors to import more of India’s workers via the U.S.-India Outsourcing Economy.
Warren has repeatedly denounced those wealthy investors, but her pro-OPT tweet leaves her allied with the very wealthy founders of a pro-OPT advocacy group, FWD.us.
Ironically, Warren’s anti-enforcement tweet was retweeted or liked by “woke” progressives whose jobs are being targeted by the white-collar migrants.
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