The recent federal crackdown on Cognizant – marked by the U.S. Department of Labor suspending its PERM filings for green cards amid sweeping fraud investigations – brings a flood of familiar memories rushing back. Over two decades ago, I was on the frontlines at the U.S. Consulate in Chennai, adjudicating hundreds of visa applications daily in a high-pressure, fraud-laden atmosphere.
Back then, the consulate operated a Business Express Program, which was an accelerated, preferential service for major conglomerates like TCS, Wipro, Satyam, Infosys, Accenture –and Cognizant. The red carpets didn't stop with Indian IT firms; American blue-chip multinationals like General Electric, Microsoft, and Honeywell were routinely swept into this mix under the same umbrella of unquestioned corporate trust. Higher-level leadership treated these giants as unimpeachable stewards of integrity. Their staff received top-brass handling, allowing applicants to sail through with minimal friction and speedy visa approvals. Yet on the visa line, facing hundreds of applicants a day, my instincts told me a very different story.
Coming from an academic background where two of my sisters are computer engineers, I knew enough about software architecture and systems engineering to test an applicant's technical depth beyond surface-level buzzwords. When I started asking basic computer science questions during what were supposed to be routine, expedited interviews under the Business Express Program, the corporate veneer cracked quickly across the board.
Many applicants claiming to travel under B-1/B-2 visas for vague reasons like "gaining knowledge requirements" were far from seasoned engineers. Instead, many had merely completed a couple of basic MCSE courses or a short graphic design class. Under corporate cover, they were using fast-track business visas to enter the United States, engage in unauthorized work, and later transition into H-1B status. Corrupt HR handlers and third-party staffing intermediaries within these corporate ecosystems were turning the program into a lucrative pipeline, slipping underqualified individuals into the corporate applicant pool for money in return.
While companies like Cognizant were adept at cultivating high-level favor – even inviting our consular leadership to their virtual NASDAQ bell-ringing ceremony in Chennai – multinational names like GE and Microsoft carried an implicit aura of authority that made senior management even more reluctant to question their submissions.
These abuses could have been nipped in the bud two decades ago had leadership listened to junior consular officers making decisions at the window. When you sit on the visa line day in and day out, your judgment becomes exceptionally sharp through constant practice. You learn to detect fraud patterns, recognize rehearsed lines, and spot structural inconsistencies across thousands of cases. In contrast, Non-Immigrant Visa Chiefs and senior managers sit at administrative desks, focused on macro-level operations, processing metrics, and high-level diplomatic and corporate relations.
While our immediate consular leadership in Chennai generally encouraged rigorous adjudication to protect U.S. borders, pressure mounted from above. The consular chief in Delhi who oversaw all India missions, focused heavily on volume and maintaining smooth corporate relations, routinely pushed a culture of "issue, issue, issue." When junior officers raised alarms about Cognizant, GE, Microsoft, Honeywell, and the widespread exploitation of the Business Express Program, our concerns were frequently brushed off by elders who lauded these companies' "top-notch" reputations without ever analyzing individual credentials.
Seeing Cognizant face federal enforcement 20 years later validates what frontline officers knew all along: high-level administrative trust is no substitute for window-level vetting. Had leadership backed the officers on the visa line back then, taken our fraud referrals seriously, and dismantled corporate fast-track loopholes, decades of systemic visa abuse, wage suppression, and immigration fraud could have been prevented. A stitch in time would have saved nine.