{"id":23220,"date":"2020-07-14T10:53:17","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T14:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=23220"},"modified":"2020-07-14T10:53:20","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T14:53:20","slug":"opt-fraud-dhs-crackdown-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/07\/14\/opt-fraud-dhs-crackdown-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Removes 4,600 Fraudulent OPT Participants from the Program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the strongest action yet against a rapidly expanding migrant work program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is deporting or refusing readmission to 4,600 former foreign students<\/a> for their use of fraudulent documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DHS said the students, educated at U.S. colleges, paid a falsified employer to give them “reference letters” to maintain legal status through the Optional Training Program (OPT)<\/a> while working, illegally, for other companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expulsions and visa revocations may be just a sliver off a very large iceberg. In its 2020 Annual Report to Congress<\/a>, DHS\u2019 Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman concluded that OPT lacks checks and balances, with little capacity to actually confirm that the assertions made by students or employers are true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile practical training affords numerous advantages to foreign students, schools and U.S. employers, OPT remains a source of concern due to its vulnerability to fraud and indicators that it is being leveraged by foreign governments as a means of conducting espionage or illicit technology transfer,\u201d wrote Michael Dougherty, DHS’ ombudsman, in the report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DHS\nreport identified a key weakness in Designated School Officials (DSO), who are\nresponsible for accepting, collating and forwarding OPT certifications. The\naudit found that DSOs do not have the time, resources, or expertise to\nrecognize fraud, misrepresentations or national security risks. Its findings\nechoed the Government Accountability Office, which has repeatedly pointed to\nDSOs as a vulnerability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond\nDSOs, the government itself has a structural problem, with multiple agencies\noverseeing parts of OPT. Inside DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)\nand U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are involved, as is the\nState Department. This bureaucratic stove-piping can stymie effective regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nare big red flags for a program that has ballooned from 24,838 participants in 2007 to more than 200,000. Two of the top five\nsending nations are China and Iran, neither of whose governments’\ninterests or policies aligns with this country\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major participant is India, whose citizens constituted the bulk of the individuals involved in the DHS removal. Integra Technologies, LLC, based in Wilmington, Delaware, was reported<\/a> to have 3,517 OPT students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, FAIR<\/a> noted that \u201cU.S. universities and bottom-feeding employers love OPT because schools get more foreign tuition revenue and businesses get subsidized labor with an 8.25 percent federal tax break (effectively a $10,000-$15,000 discount on each hire).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that the Trump administration is sending home or barring a batch of fraudulent OPT student workers, DHS should also go after those who aided and hired them. There are plenty of players<\/a> in this game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the strongest action yet against a rapidly expanding migrant work program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is deporting or refusing readmission to 4,600 former foreign students for their use of fraudulent documents. DHS said the students, educated at U.S. colleges, paid a falsified employer to give them “reference letters” to maintain legal status<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":12908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[5246],"tags":[262,1524,1174,4367],"yst_prominent_words":[8929,8925,2298,9239,2187,2181,5238,2697,9241,1963,2557,9242,8374,1944,2295,1940,2558,4618,1939,9240],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23221,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23220\/revisions\/23221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23220"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}