I-9 E-Verify Immigration Compliance

By Bruce Buchanan, Sebelist Buchanan Law PLLC



Infosys, an Indian IT services company, has agreed to pay $1 million to settle an investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into its visa violations. Infosys failed to obtain the appropriate visa for foreign workers employed in New York. Infosys’ foreign workers held temporary B-1 visas instead of H-1B work permits. Visitor (B-1) visas are not subject to a cap and are much easier to obtain than H-1B visas.

The foreign nationals, holding B-1 visas, were not paid the prevailing wage that H-1B workers must be paid. Thus, New York stated Infosys owed taxes on the higher wages that should have been paid to Infosys employees and that its employees were in violation of their visa terms. Infosys stated the investigation centered on alleged paperwork errors and denied wrongdoing.

As readers may recall, in 2013, Infosys paid $34 million to the federal government to resolve allegations that it committed visa fraud and I-9 violations. The New York matter was an outgrowth of the same misdeeds of Infosys.

Tags: b-1 visas, foreign workers, h-1b visas, prevailing wage, settle

By Bruce Buchanan, Sebelist Buchanan Law



After pleading guilty to fraud in relation to H-1B visas, New York immigration lawyer Loreto Kudera, and his wife, Hazel Kudera, the owner of several medical staffing agencies, were sentenced to two years probation and fined $25,000 each. Previously, they had forfeited $1 million.

Hazel Kudera owned multiple staffing agencies in New York that specialized in providing nurses to hospitals, outpatient and skilled nursing facilities. According to the government, Hazel and Loreto Kudera submitted at least 100 fraudulent applications to authorities, and profited from filing fees collected from the nurses and from the health care facilities that paid Hazel Kudera’s staffing agencies.

Hazel and Loreto Kudera falsely stated that the foreign nurses would be working in specialty occupations at prevailing wage rates when in actuality they were going to work as licensed practical nurses (LPNs) or registered nurses (RNs) at much lower rates of pay.

As part of the alleged scam, Hazel Kudera falsified a staffing agreement between NYC Healthcare Staffing and Dewitt Rehabilitation listing job positions that did not exist, such as clinical coordinator and health care quality assurance manager, in order to cover up the false job titles she provided to USICS.

Tags: fine, h-1b visas, sentenced, uscis, visa fraud