I’ve Been Saying This Since 2019: The H-1B Fraud Is Real, and I Witnessed It Firsthand
A recent Fox News opinion piece by Simon Hankinson argues that Trump’s new $100,000 fee on H-1B visa petitions is a good first step but doesn’t go nearly far enough to protect American workers. I agree. And I’m not just agreeing based on what I read — I’m agreeing because I lived it. I watched it happen right in front of me, and I’ve been speaking out about it since 2019.
Let me tell you my story.
Who I Am and Why This Matters
I’m a general contractor now, but for years I ran a personal training company called At Home Fitness out of Minnetonka, Minnesota. I did in-home personal training, and over the majority of my time doing that work, more than 25% of my clients were of Indian heritage and were here on H-1B visas working in the tech industry.
Now, I’m not just some guy who stumbled into this. I have a deep background in website design, web development, and digital marketing. I taught myself everything — how to build websites, which coding languages and platforms to use, how to run paid ad campaigns on Facebook, Google, and Yelp. I even put myself through cybersecurity courses at my own expense. Everything except those courses I learned by spending hundreds and hundreds of hours watching YouTube videos and doing the work myself. I knew Python, HTML, what systems were most popular, how to manage development projects, how to hire and work with overseas freelancers. I built apps. I managed my own marketing. I wore every hat.
So when my IT clients started telling me what they did for work, I was genuinely interested. This was right in my wheelhouse. I knew exactly what they were talking about — or at least, I thought they would.
The Red Flag I Kept Seeing Over and Over
When I would ask these clients detailed questions about their IT work — the kind of questions any knowledgeable person in the field would naturally ask — they couldn’t answer me. They’d go blank. Deer in the headlights. I was the only person in the room who actually knew what I was talking about, and I was the personal trainer.
This happened again and again, across many different clients. At first I thought maybe it was a communication barrier or they just didn’t like talking about work. But it kept happening. Something wasn’t adding up.
Then I met a married couple who changed everything.
The Job Offer That Revealed the Whole Scheme
This couple ran a hiring agency. They were well-connected, had contracts with major Twin Cities employers — companies like Medtronic, Optum, Target, and Cargill — and they were at the top of the food chain because they could deliver workers on demand.
They offered me a job as a recruiter, saying I knew enough people in the industry to place candidates. But then they made me a second offer: they could get me a position as an IT professional at one of those major companies. They said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Tyler, you actually know more about these systems than the people we place.”
I said great, how does that work?
They told me they would do the interview for me.
I stopped them right there. What do you mean you’ll do the interview for me?
They explained it plainly: they would handle the interview, I would get the job, and then I’d just show up to work. Nobody ever checks in on you, they said. At a place like Target or Optum, you will never, ever see your hiring manager after you’re hired. So as far as the company knows, the person who interviewed is the person showing up — even though they’re completely different people.
And if anyone ever got suspicious? No problem. They had contracts with enough companies that they could just move me to a new placement at a different location. New company, fresh start, no questions asked.
I turned them down. Immediately and without hesitation. But I never forgot it.
This Is Systemic, Not Isolated
What that couple described to me isn’t a one-off scam. It’s an organized system. And the Fox News article backs this up with hard numbers and documented cases.
The piece points out that fraud, nepotism, and corruption have long plagued the H-1B process, with outsourcing firms and so-called “body shops” deliberately gaming the system to place foreign workers over qualified Americans. One company, Nanosemantics, had its owners plead guilty to submitting fraudulent H-1B applications that falsely claimed foreign workers had jobs waiting for them at companies — jobs that didn’t even exist.
Cognizant, one of the largest outsourcing firms in the world, has petitioned for over 52,000 H-1B workers since 2009. In 2024 they were found liable for intentionally discriminating against more than 2,000 non-Indian employees. American workers at Cognizant were twice as likely to be fired or resign compared to visa holders. Black employees were let go at a rate 23 times higher than Asian workers.
Facebook was fined $4.75 million for deliberately denying qualified American workers a fair chance to apply for jobs that had already been reserved for H-1B hires. Apple paid $25 million for the same kind of discrimination. And the article notes that these fines are a drop in the bucket compared to the profit these companies make by bringing in cheap foreign labor.
This is not a fringe problem. This is widespread, documented, and ongoing.
What This Did to American Workers — What It Did to Me
During COVID, I applied for over 500 jobs in IT and project management. I had real, substantial experience. I had spent years managing app development projects, hiring and coordinating freelance developers from India, Pakistan, and elsewhere because I couldn’t afford domestic rates when I was bootstrapping my own company. I knew how to manage timelines, deliverables, and technical teams. I had built things from the ground up.
I got one interview. One. Out of over 500 applications.
The reason is simple: Twin Cities employers were hiring H-1B workers for around $25 an hour instead of paying an American worker a six-figure salary for the same role. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a business strategy. And it’s one that deliberately shuts Americans out of their own labor market while driving wages down across the board.
The Fox News article confirms the data behind what I experienced personally. The H-1B salary minimum was set at $60,000 back in the 1990s and has never been adjusted for inflation. A Heritage Foundation report from July 2025 found that most H-1B positions pay below-average salaries. Microsoft reportedly pays 82% of its foreign workers less than market wage. Deloitte paid H-1B workers 10% less than Americans in comparable roles.
Meanwhile, Sens. Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin — a Republican and a Democrat — wrote jointly to the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft saying they find it hard to believe these companies can’t find qualified American tech workers to fill these positions. When both sides of the aisle are saying the same thing, that should tell you something.
What I Think Will Happen With Trump’s Reform
The $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions will hurt the body shops. That part is true. But here’s what I believe will actually happen once the mandate requiring visa holders in a holding status to return home and reapply takes effect:
They won’t leave.
It’s that simple. The networks are too established, the money is too good, and the system is too easy to game. What I expect to see is more of the same fraudulent interview scheme I was personally offered — someone else does the interview, the visa gets sorted on paper, and then the same person who never left shows up to work like nothing happened. In the meantime, some will collect unemployment benefits and take advantage of American taxpayer-funded systems while still occupying jobs that should go to Americans.
The $100,000 fee is a start. But without real enforcement — actual verification of who is showing up to work versus who interviewed, actual audits of these placement agencies and body shops, actual consequences that outweigh the financial incentive to cheat — the fraud will adapt and continue.
The Bottom Line
I’m not against immigration. I’m not against people coming to this country and building a life here legally. What I am against is a corrupt system that allows companies to game visa programs to cut costs, suppress American wages, and shut hardworking Americans out of their own job market — while the people being placed sometimes don’t even know the skills they’re supposedly being hired for.
I watched it happen in my gym. I was offered a piece of it. I said no, and I’ve been talking about it ever since.
Trump’s H-1B reform is what we need, it’s step in the right direction. We will build off of this and hold companies accountable otherwise the fraud will keep running deeper. We need real enforcement, real accountability, and a genuine commitment to putting American workers first.
Hire Americans. It really is that simple.
