Iowa Company Involved in Immigrant Worker Scheme
WHO Staff Writer
February 12, 2009


U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker holds a news conference on the visa fraud investigation (WHO)

U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker has announced an immigration bust involving an Iowa company. Whitaker says eleven people filed false documents to obtain visas for Indian and Pakistani computer engineers and programmers.

He says Vision Systems, Incorporated shipped the workers to California, but it paid them Iowa's lower minimum wage instead. At Thursday morning's news conference, Whitaker said the scheme took away skilled computer jobs from American workers.

It allegedly involved a false address in West Des Moines and falsified documents sent to Iowa Workforce Development. Eleven people from seven states have been indicted in the case.

Whitaker says they profited by $7.4 million from the scheme.

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"You can look at these locations where these workers were and that they probably displaced qualified American workers because they were working at a lower wage than the prevailing wage at that location," says Whitaker.

Thursday morning, Whitaker also announced indictments in connection with a similar, but unrelated case in Clinton, Iowa.

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