Alien Visa - H1B status

tracey

Does anyone have some experience in hiring
or attempting to hire aliens in a VISA petition
process? We are an aviation firm trying to
hire an Australian pilot, who's H-1B status
was recently rescinded because his paperwork was
incomplete. He asked for our help in the process,
and we hired an attorney with INS experience to
facilitate things. The Attorney has drafted
a letter from our company to the INS singing this guy's praises and really puffing up his resume!
With a big PUFF on his proposed salary....
She seems to feel this is the only route to a
successful outcome with the INS. My question
is, is the INS in the habit of "auditing"
their VISA-holders? How are we exposed if we
exaggerate his credentials? His salary?
And, if this letter is disclosed to the
petitioner, are we held to the details it
outlines? The attorney is mute on this point -
I'm hoping someone out there has some insight..

tb

ritaanz

There have been posts in the past regarding the HiB Visa. Do a search because the information is excellent.

Personally, I would not inflate or exaggerate the resume, nor would I pay more than the going rate.

Your post indicated his paperwork was incomplete. Did the attorney review what the actual problems were?

pork1

TRACEY: The first question that comes to my mind is: Hiring a pilot and specifically from Australia!!! What is the specific hiring criteria that your company is looking for that a US Citizen licensed pilot would not have?

When we tried to hire a person from outside of the US, the Department of Labor required us to prove that we have not been able to find a US Citizen that could or is willing to fit our position description. We could not accomplish DOL concerns and cancelled our efforts.

In this day and time it would be very difficult to get an ok for any foreign national that is not already here and legal to get an offer to come to this location for a hiring opportunity.

Good luck in your efforts!

PORK

Don D

First, your company is 'the petitioner'. The pilot is the non-resident alien. Any document you or a company official signs in this process is open to ultimate inspection and fines can result if you falsify information. Pork is right. In order for the entire process to proceed along as intended, you will at some not too distant point be advertising the job, collecting applications, interviewing and telling the government why you did not hire any of the several 'domestic' applicants. Also, you will be creating, at the government's insistence, a 'public domain' file open to inspection to anyone who wishes to take a look at it. It is a violation of federal law to falsify any of these documents or to falsify your support letters that flow from the attorney to the government. The company is indeed moving down a slippery slope by sponsoring somebody's 'golden boy' and doing so in a less than honest manner. It won't work. Oh, then there's the matter of some 5-8 thousand dollars as this thing slowly winds itself through the 4-7 year labyrinth. As I've said many times, sponsoring an alien is nothing at all like adopting a family for Christmas.

mstechphr

Don D and Pork are right on the money with this one. IMO this attorney is not acting in your company's best interest. If your company hired him, your company is the client, not the H-holder. This is a time-consuming and very expensive process and you want to make sure that you can substantiate with solid documentation any information you give to the USCIS or DOL. For example: If the minimum prevailing wage for a position is $25,000/yr and you pay this person $20,000, your attorney might recommend that you raise this person's salary to $25,000 to meet the MPW before processing the H. (and that opens another box of issues) But if you let your attorney tell the USCIS that you are paying this person $25g when in reality you only pay him $20g then you have an enormous liability issue. I would never sign off on any document created by an attorney that contains information known to be false.

Don D

And any attorney found to have done so will be in deeper doo-doo than he/she ever in his/her life thought possible. At least up to the neck and possibly a foot deeper.

pork1

AND HE MIGHT AS WELL COME TO WORK FOR US AND HE CAN ROLL AROUND IN "IT" ALL DAY FOR AS LONG AS HE WANTS.

pork

dchr9203

I have recent experience (last three months) with this one! I would not take your attorney's advice because he/she is talking about defrauding a US organization and that is punishable by fines and/or jail time. You as the representative applying on his behalf must sign the application attesting to the integrity of the information. Are you prepared to put your name on the line base on the "fluff" your attorney recommends? Part of an H-1B Visa application is documentation that the person's skills are exceptional (in our case it was a programmer with rare programming capabilities/experience in DoD), and that their salary is line with the current market, not below, and not way over.

Good luck.

Don D

And DOL, through your state Department of Employment Security will TELL you what the prevailing rate is. It will not be left to your analysis. It is mandated. You have very little discretion in any of the process once it starts gaining momentum, other than telling the truth. Have you hollered Uncle (Sam) yet?

Sunny

I agree that it is a very bad idea to sign a falsified document for the federal government. Particularly in this area, considering homeland security and its implications - and a PILOT no less. We obtained an H1B for an engineer we hired 2 years ago and are now working on his green card. We went through the whole cycle - advertising the job, reviewing all the resumes, filling out all the forms and paying the attorney. He got his H1B (and has his labor certification with the green card supposedly just around the corner) because he had some unique knowledge in our industry and because we had a very experienced attorney who specialized in immigration law. If you are going to pursue this I think I would check with an(other) experienced immigration attorney. But be careful, getting him a job shouldn't be a trade-off for losing yours.

franfields

We just went through the process for a non-resident and received the paperwork today saying our H-1B Visa application was approved for October 1, 2004, the start of the next fiscal year. If you are going to go for an H-1B, you need to do it fairly quickly as the quoto is reached pretty early in the fiscal year.

I agree with everything that has been said already. Don't risk it! It won't be worth it in the long run. And, as far as the attorney is concerned, I would say run from them as fast as you can. They sound like they could get you and your company in a lot of trouble.