VA company nabbed for H-1B violations

An IT company located in the suburbs of Washington, DC has been caught and fined for cheating immigrant employees working under the government's H-1B visa program. The U.S. Labor Department said Sterling, VA-based Globalcynex Inc., will pay nearly $1.7 million to 343 employees holding H-1B visas who did not receive their required wages from March 2005 through March 2007.

In addition, the government said the workers were illegally charged training fees of $1,000 to $2,500. If the settlement were split evenly among all 343 employees, they would get nearly $5,000 each.

"This case underscores the firm stance the wage and hour division is taking to ensure that employers do not undercut American workers by underpaying temporary foreign workers," said Corlis Sellers, regional administrator for the Labor Department's wage and hour division's northeast region, in a statement. 

A recent study by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services looked at about 250 H-1B users and concluded that as many as one in five H-1B visa applications involved fraud or the use of inaccurate data.

Globalcynex runs operations in Hyderabad, India, and provides offshore services including data warehousing. In 2006, Globalcynex had 137 H-1B petitions approved and in 2007, it had 142, according to government records.

For more on this H-1B issue:
- see this Computerworld.com article

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