Former US Representative and economist Dr Dave Brat has alleged rampant fraud in the H-1B visa system, claiming on a podcast that one Indian district secured more than double the total number of visas legally permitted nationwide. Brat's remarks have reignited scrutiny of the programme at a time when the Trump administration is intensifying its crackdown on H-1B visas.
Speaking on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, Brat said the H-1B system had been "captured by industrial-scale fraud", asserting that visa allocations from India had reached levels that defied statutory limits.
"71 per cent of H-1B visas come from India, and only 12 per cent from China. That tells you something's going on right there," Brat said. "There's a cap of only 85,000 H-1B visas, yet somehow one district in India -- the Madras (Chennai) district -- got 220,000. That's 2.5 times the cap Congress has set. So that's the scam."
Brat went on to frame the issue as a direct threat to American workers. "When one of these folks comes over and claims they're skilled -- they're not, that's the fraud. They're taking away your family's job, your mortgage, your house, all of that."
According to reports, the US consulate in Chennai processed roughly 220,000 H-1B visas and an additional 140,000 H-4 dependent visas in 2024. The consulate handles applications from four major regions -- Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Telangana -- making it one of the busiest H-1B processing centres in the world.
The claims have resurfaced earlier allegations by Mahvash Siddiqui, an Indian-origin US Foreign Service Officer who served at the Chennai consulate nearly two decades ago. Siddiqui, in an interview, described the H-1B system as rife with forged documents, fabricated qualifications and proxy applicants.
She said she adjudicated at least 51,000 non-immigrant visas between 2005 and 2007, most of them H-1Bs. "80–90 per cent of the H-1B visas from India were fake -- either fake degrees or forged documents, or applicants who were simply not highly skilled," she said.
Siddiqui pointed to Hyderabad as a particular hotspot, claiming that Ameerpet -- a well-known training hub in the city -- hosted shops that openly coached visa applicants and sold fake employment letters, educational certificates and even marriage documents.
Siddiqui said that when consular officers began identifying large-scale fraud patterns, their efforts were met with resistance. She claimed there was "significant political pressure" from multiple sides and that their anti-fraud initiative was dismissed internally as a "rogue operation".
