The Hindu American Foundation has objected to US economist Dr Dave Brat’s claim that only the Chennai district in India received 220,000 H-1B visas and said that the claim was unfounded. Dr Dave Brat made the comment as he was speaking about India’s H-1B fraud appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast. The former US representative said 71 per cent of H-1Bs come from India and only 12 per cent come from China and one district issued 2.5 times the cap that Congress has set. The US cap of H-1B visas is 85,000 yearly, not including renewals, extensions or dependent visas. One region of one country giving 2.5 times the fixed cap is a serious allegation and the HAF said when a public figure cites such figures, there should be some data. “We are troubled by the misinformation being shared about the Chennai Consulate supposedly issuing 220,000 H-1B visas. While several media outlets have reported on Brat’s claims they explicitly note that the figure has not been independently verified by any official US government source. To clarify, the US cap of 85,000 H-1B visas applies only to new visas selected through the lottery and does not include renewals, extensions, or dependent visas. It is possible for a consulate to process a large number of these visa events without violating the cap. There is currently no public data showing that Chennai issued 220,000 H-1B visas in a single year, so this claim should be treated as an unverified allegation, not a confirmed fact,” the HAF said. “It’s also important to recognize that making sweeping statements like this about a community or a country, especially from a political leader, is dangerous and ignorant. Claims like this can inflame prejudice and spread misinformation, and we should be careful not to amplify them,” the organization said.
Where did the number of 220,000 H-1B visas come from?
The exact figures were mentioned by Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at Center for Immigration Studies, in her podcast with Mahvash Siddiqui, a US Foreign Service officer who was posted in the Chennai consulate 20 years ago. As they spoke about the ‘H-1B abuse’ in the Chennai district that used to process applications from Hyderabad, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Vaughan said the Chennai consulate is one of the world’s largest H-1B visa-processing consulates and it adjudicated “220,000 H-1Bs and 140,000 H-4 visas for their family members in 2024 alone.”
