US arrests Indians, American for tech visa violations
By Bala Shah

This week, the US Government arrested six Indian nationals, as well as the Indian-born American who sponsored them on H-1B visas to work in America.  The US Government allocates about 85,000 H-1B visas every year for people with specialist skills not available in the country.  More then 90 percent of H-1B visas given to Indians are for computing professionals working for majors like TCS, Infosy and Satyam. 

It is an open secret that there is some element of fraud in the application of such visas. The US Government has taken a number of steps to tighten control to prevent a small number of companies from misusing the system.

According to the US Government, American businessman Nilesh Dasondi used his New Jersey-based Cygate Software and Consulting to apply for H-1B visas for Indians who had no background in computing.  One of the rules for H-1B visas is that it should only be allocated if there are no Americans to do the job.  As Nilesh owns an IT company,   there was a plausible cover for such a scheme.  Once the Indians made their way on H-1B visas, they were officially shown as employees of Cygate Software and Consulting, when in reality they were working in non technical jobs like managing a greeting card store.  In return, the Indians gave Nilesh Dasondi a cut of their earnings from non-technical job.

Nilesh Dasondi and his Cygate Software and Consulting have strong Indian connections.  Apart from being an Indian citizen before becoming a naturalized American, Nilesh has an office at Shiromani Complex on Satellite Road, Ahmedabad, Gujrat.  By all accounts, Cygate has a small profitable business with alliances with SAP America, PeopleSoft and Siebel.

Nilesh Dasondi has a B.S degree in Environmental Science from Stockton State College in NJ and pursued a Master of Science in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, NJ.   He was awarded 2003 National Leadership Award from NRCC and currently he is the honorary Chairman of Business Advisory Council for NRCC - NJ.

Nilesh has local political ambitions and had assisted the campaign of the local Mayor in 2005.  According to his website he had actively helped out the political campaigns for Congressman Frank Pollone and Senator Bob Menendez campaigns.  Nilesh .  He has even stood for elections at the local Council.

As the legal case unfolds it would be interesting to see if the arrests were the result of a proactive American investigation or because one of his disgruntled employees contacted the Government with the evidence.  We suspect the latter.

All those arrested have applied for bail.  If convicted,  they face fines and deportation.  A jail sentence is a strong possibility.