A claim by former US Congressman, Republican Dave Brat, where he said that Chennai has received 220,000 H1B visas while the legal limit for the same is 85,000, has sparked speculation that there is widespread fraud in the system.
Brat made the claims on a talk show hosted by conservative political strategist Steve Bannon on X called Bannon’s WarRoom.
In a talk show, Brat claimed that “Madras district” has more than double the allowed H1B limit per year for the entire world and said it was an “industrial scale fraud”.
He also further claimed that India receives 71 percent of all H1B visas while China receives only 12 percent of the same.
Brat then warns that such records take away jobs and home ownership from American citizens.
“When I say H-1B visa, you have to think of your cousins, your aunts and uncles and your grandparents. One of these people comes in and says they’re skilled; they’re not. That’s the scam. They just took your family’s job, mortgage, house and everything else,” he said.
Does Chennai process more than 2,000,000 H1B visas every year?
According to several reports, Chennai processed approximately 220,000 visas in 2024. The US Consulate in Chennai is one of the busiest in the world when it comes to processing H1B visas as it serves the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and also Telangana.
The 220,000 number has not been independently verified by Mint.
This is not the first time such claims have been made. Earlier, Mahvash Siddiqui, an Indian-US diplomat, had also raised a similar issue, calling H1B visa applications in India an “industrial scale” scam.
Siddiqui, who served at the consulate in Chennai from 2005 to 2007, said that most of the H1B visas that Indians get are fraudulent because they produce fake job sheets, forged degrees as well as interviews with representatives.
Siddiqui also claimed that there are coaching centers in Hyderabad that teach visa applicants how to go about the process. She alleged that these centers themselves sell job letters and fake education certificates.
