Former F-1 Students from India File Lawsuit Against DHS for Visa Denials Based on Employers’ Fraud

On August 10, 2023, plaintiffs consisting of over 70 Indian F-1 students filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security (Sharma et al v. United States Department of Homeland Security) for denying their visa applications due to fraud committed by their employers.  The plaintiffs were employed by four IT staffing companies that had committed fraud through their employment of students in F-1 OPT status: Andwill Technologies, AzTech Technologies LLC, Integra Technologies LLC, and WireClass Technologies LLC. 

In their complaint, the plaintiffs state that their H-1B applications were denied due to the plaintiffs’ previous employment with these IT staffing agencies despite many of the plaintiffs’ later employment by legitimate companies and are asking the court to “…order that the agency allow them to respond to any fraud allegations before making a determination on their admissibility to the US.”  The complaint alleges that DHS’s decision “…violated the Administrative Procedure Act by exceeding its authority and deeming the plaintiffs as inadmissible without a full record of the evidence, according to the lawsuit. The agency’s actions were also procedurally deficient because it didn’t notify the visa applicants of the action against them.”   The plaintiffs argue that DHS is required by law to also determine that the plaintiffs knew they had made false communications in their previous visa applications and that these false communications were material to DHS’s denials of the plaintiffs’ subsequent visa applications.