Another Infosys staffer cries visa fraud

The visa issue has come to haunt Infosys Technologies again after a third complaint lodged against it by an employee surfaced on Wednesday.

This time, the complaint relates to non-compliance of the Form I-9.

According to Wikipedia, Form I-9 is used by an employer to verify an employee’s identity and to establish that the worker is eligible to accept employment in the United States.

The third whistleblower’s complaint, which was reportedly filed in 2010, has come to the fore two days after the exit of its human resources head Eshan Joshi.

Joshi has been replaced by Vasudev Nayak, a visa expert, who previously headed the overseas operations of Wipro.

According to industry experts, the latest allegation could be more damning considering it pertains to Form I-9 rules and there is evidence of email exchanged between HR department officials.

The latest complaint also reportedly contains a note from Infosys’ counsel in the US, Jefferey Friedel, citing irregularities in following visa norms by the company’s banking and capital markets division.

The earlier complaints also pertained to visa norm violations. One of these, filed by Jay Palmer, a former employee, in the Alabama court in February this year relates to misuse of B1 visas for sending low-skilled workers to customer sites in the US to counter the cap on H1-B visas by US immigration authorities.

None of the Infosys officials DNA tried to contact were available.

An industry expert, who did not want to be named, said that given the frequency with which these complaints were surfacing, it was imperative to study whether there was a “systemic fault” in the company or it was just “coincidence and bad luck.”

Another industry expert, who has fair knowledge of US immigration laws, said the latest case was not very different from Palmer’s.

He said the case against Infosys, currently on in Texas, has been handed over to a Grand Jury and if the verdict goes against it, the person responsible for the immigration process at the company at the time of the visa fraud could even be put behind the bars.

According to this expert, most major IT players resort to such measures since it is difficult to get H1B visas when you are in immediate need of skilled workers for a project.

“Infosys has got into trouble because it mishandled the first case. Now, more people are speaking up to extort money,” he said.