Former president Joe Biden’s ex-adviser Ajay Bhutoria, the Indian-American community leader on immigration policy, said there have been instances of rampant abuses of the H-1B visa program that resulted in the desperate measure of the Donald Trump administration to impose $100,000 fee on the program.In a podcast, Bhutoria said he happened to visit one of the biggest shoemakers’ unit three years ago where one IT company of India had their resources working on a large project. Bhutoria revealed that most of the people there were on B-1 visa which is meant for visitors. They were brought in to the US as visitors, where they would work for three months, won’t get any salary but receive a lump sum at the end of their stay. He said he told the authorities that it was illegal but they said they were training those people which is allowed in B-1 visa but Bhutoria added that there was no training going on and people were actually working. B-1 visa is a non-immigrant US visa for people traveling temporarily for business purposes and specifically not for employment. It accommodates attending meetings, conferences or negotiations, and attending training as well. The Indian-American community leader said that now L-1 visa will be abused as H-1B is off limits for many companies. The L-1 visa is a non-immigrant US work visa that allows a company to transfer employees from one of its foreign offices to a related office (branch, parent, subsidiary, or affiliate) in the United States. “L-1 visa is a company-to-company transfer and they can’t work on the client site but they violate. And now that they can’t do H-1B, they will use L-1 visas,” he said. On the issue of visa abuse, Bhutoria added that consulting firms that hoodwink people and promise them a good life in America. And these people arrive in the US, end up in a one bedroom flat with 20 people, work in Uber — far from the life that they were promised, Bhutoria said.
