New Delhi: Neeraj Sharma, a 50-year-old Indian-origin businessman in New Jersey, could lose his US citizenship after the Donald Trump administration filed a civil case seeking to denaturalise him. He allegedly committed H-1B visa fraud for other workers through his company.
Sharma is among 17 naturalised US citizens named in separate denaturalisation actions filed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in different district courts. He is the owner and CEO of Magnavision LLC, a staffing company in New Jersey.
In a statement issued on 8 June, the DoJ accused the 17 individuals of procuring US citizenship through fraud as well as failing to disclose prior offences, including sexual abuse, wire fraud, and drug-related crimes.
Sharma is the only person from India named in the DoJ’s list. The others are from Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, Somalia, China, Congo, the Philippines and Trinidad and Tobago.
H-1B visa fraud
The case against Sharma goes back to 11 H-1B visa petitions filed with US Citizenship and Immigration Services between April 2015 and April 2017. The DoJ has alleged that Sharma signed and filed those petitions as an officer of Magnavision.
Each petition allegedly claimed that the visa beneficiaries would work for a particular global financial institution. The petitions also allegedly carried letters on official corporate letterhead with forged signatures of company executives.
The H-1B programme allows US businesses to hire foreign workers in specialised or technical jobs. Before hiring a worker under the programme, an employer must first get approval from the Department of Labor by filing a labour condition application, and then seek permission from USCIS to hire a specific worker.
The civil complaint against Sharma was filed in New Jersey on 4 June. It states that he became a permanent US resident in February 2012, applied for naturalisation in April 2017, and became a US citizen in December that year.
The complaint adds that Sharma knew the H-1B petitions contained false material statements when he submitted them under penalty of perjury.
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‘False statements not limited to visa petitions’
The government’s case is that the alleged false statements were not limited to the visa petitions. When Sharma applied for naturalisation, he answered ‘no’ to questions on whether he had ever committed an offence for which he had not been arrested, given false or misleading information to US government officials, or lied to gain immigration benefits.
The complaint states that Sharma repeated those answers during his naturalisation interview in December 2017. His application was approved the same day, and he was admitted to citizenship on 7 December 2017.
Sharma was later convicted of fraud and misuse of visas. According to the complaint, he pleaded guilty in October 2019 to making a false statement about a material fact in a visa application. In April 2021, a US district court sentenced him to 10 months of home detention and three years of probation.
The DoJ used Sharma’s own plea agreement to build its case, noting he explicitly acknowledged that denaturalisation and deportation could result from his conviction.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, naturalised US citizenship can be revoked if it was illegally procured or obtained by concealment of a material fact or wilful misrepresentation, the DoJ said.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)