San Antonio Express-News Nation & World News


INS raid blame shifted


(Last updated Friday, Jan 21, 2000)


By Sig Christenson
Express-News Staff Writer



Two Houston firms that provided 40 Indian contract computer programmers
arrested by U.S. immigration agents at Randolph AFB have broken no laws,
one of their San Antonio attorneys said Friday.


Saying the Immigration and Naturalization Service "went about this thing
the wrong way," attorney Joe De Mott also argued that the workers, who were
released from detention Friday, didn't need to be arrested.


But his assertion that the INS instead should have sent a letter to
Frontier Consulting Inc. and Softech Consulting Inc. advising it planned to
revoke the workers' visas drew a quick rebuke by an agency official.


"If someone commits a crime in San Antonio, someone isn't going to call
them up and say, 'We're going to arrest you,'" said Thomas Homan, INS
assistant district director of criminal investigations. "The immigration
service is sending a message. We're not going to tolerate companies or
individuals who knowingly violate immigration law."


The Indian contract computer programmers, some earning as much as $50,000 a
year and employed at the base since 1996, were arrested Thursday at the Air
Force Personnel Center. AFPC oversees personnel matters affecting 352,263
active-duty troops and more than 182,900 civilian workers worldwide.


Capt. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh, an AFPC spokeswoman, said a probe is continuing
but didn't know "what's going to happen with our relationship with the
contractor."


Thirteen workers were released without charges being filed, but face
possible deportation later, Homan said. Two others were freed on personal
recognizance bonds while 23 posted $5,000 bail each, he said.


The Indians were not given preferential treatment in their release, Homan
said, noting that none of the 40 immigrants had criminal records and are
not considered a threat to the community. He said the same bond procedures
are applied regardless of an person's nationality.


"It depends on the situation, but no favoritism is shown to one nationality
over another," he said.


Veteran Alamo City immigration lawyer Nancy Shivers echoed that view, while
attorney Lee Teran, who heads a St. Mary's University clinic that educates
law students and aids low-income immigrants, said people will be released
when they're likely to act as witnesses or when detention space is tight.


Attorney Simon Azar-Farr, who said he talked with De Mott's office Thursday
about the case, doubted the Indians received preferential treatment and
thought the bonds were "way too high" because the workers were professionals.


"Given the nature of the problem, which is a minor problem, they (the INS)
could have resolved this instead of the unnecessary publicity they brought
onto the Air Force," he said.


The raid came after a six-month INS probe into a type of visa fraud dubbed
"body shopping," the practice of firms telling the government they'll place
highly skilled foreign workers in jobs that don't exist, then sending those
people to other cities.


Homan said two firms subcontracting for ACS Government Solutions Group
Inc., AFPC's prime contractor for developing the two computer programs, may
have broken the law by claiming they'd place the workers in Houston, then
later shifting them to San Antonio.


Lee Allen, a spokesman with Rockville, Md.-based ACS, said his company's
actions had been above-board, and Homan has said ACS is not suspected of
wrongdoing.


De Mott, local counsel for the firms, said the dispute rests on whether
Softech and Frontier, which helped the workers obtain H1-B visas allowing
them to work in the United States, were in fact employing those workers,
and whether the companies skirted federal rules requiring Labor Department
approval to move the Indians to San Antonio.


"The law says if you come here on an H1-B visa, you have to work for the
employer that brought you here on your H1-B visa," he said.


"Immigration is saying they are no longer employed by the people that
brought them here, therefore they're in violation of their visa status," De
Mott said. "Our argument is they continue to be employed by the people that
brought them here for their H1-B visas."


Homan, when told of De Mott's statements, declined to comment.


Controversy about H1-B visas, which give immigrants as long as six years to
work in the United States and are a critical bridge to permanent residence
status, has grown along with the demand for skilled, educated foreign workers.


Federal law permits 115,000 H1-B visa approvals a year. As the information
technology industry and lawmakers have asked that the cap be raised to
200,000, the State Department and other federal officials have charged the
visa program has been abused in India, China and Russia.


The House Immigration Committee learned last May that the U.S. Consulate in
Chennai, India, could verify the authenticity of fewer than half of 3,200
visa applications.


Spokesmen for U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm and U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, both Texas
Republicans who have supported raising the H1-B cap to 200,000 per year,
blamed the INS on Friday of failing to do its job.


U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, voted against the increase, while
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, backed a $5 million boost for INS.
A spokesman said Hutchison knows that raising the cap is one way of coping
with high-tech labor shortages, "but that does not forgive abuses in the
program."


Immigration attorney Shivers, though, noted that federal labor law is
increasingly complex and confusing, even for employment firms specializing
in placing foreign workers into jobs.


"I think its ironic that we arrested 40 employees down here who were sent
here by the Houston-based employer," Shivers commented. "It's interesting
that we don't arrest the Houston-based employer who sent them someplace
without doing the proper filing."