INS drops charges against computer
programmers in San Antonio
R S Shankar
"They arrested us as if we were common criminals, they humiliated us in front of our American colleagues, and now that they have decided to drop the charges, there is not even a whisper of an apology," the computer programmer says with a sigh.
It is not easy for him to recall the raid that some people in the community have compared to KGB and Gestapo tactics.
"They have not even said 'sorry' to our pregnant colleague who was detained for several hours," he said.
Like 22 of his Indian colleagues who were arrested by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents at Randolph Air Base in San Antonio and threatened with deportation, he said he feared the INS could hit back at him and so did not want his name revealed.
The programmer was speaking soon after the INS announced this weekend that they have dropped deportation proceedings against the 23 programmers.
Forty programmers, including a pregnant woman, were arrested last month and handcuffed because they were suspected of working at an unauthorised site, the INS claimed. The programmers were supposed to work at Houston, but were found working some 200 miles away. Soon after questioning the 40, INS decided to initiate deportation proceedings against 23.
Joe de Mott, a San Antonio attorney representing many of the programmers, said he was confident they would be allowed to work in the United States.
"I'd say they're pretty much out of the woods," he said. "The focus has shifted now from the workers to the companies and whether or not the companies are in compliance with all requirements, and I think we can show they are."
Authorities now say that they will continue investigating the two subcontracting employment firms in Houston, which are owned by Indians, for bringing the workers to America under false pretexts. The firms have stoutly denied the allegations. Lawyers for the firms said the INS complaint was a matter of mere technicality. The 23 programmers were doing exactly the kind of work they were supposed to do, the lawyers said. "It was not as if they came to America as hi-tech programmers and were working as dish-washers in an Indian restaurant," one of the attorneys said.
If the licences of the two firms -- Softech Consulting Inc and Frontier Consulting Inc -- which brought the programmers to America is revoked, they could still be sent back to India or given "a period of time in which to depart from the United States", INS officials say.
The arrest of the programmers and concomitant humiliation drew protests from Indian Ambassador Naresh Chandra, Indian community leaders and immigration attorneys.
"These well-educated, hard working, tax-paying, law-abiding people should not have to lose their self-esteem on such a mere technicality," wrote Santosh Chaphekar in a letter to the San Jose Mercury News.
Some of the programmers, who are green card holders, were arrested because they did not have the cards with them.
"How different is this practice from a Communist state that requires its citizens to carry identification cards all the time?"
Echoing Chaphekar's thoughts, Kanwal Rekhi, prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur, said the raid "smacks of Gestapo tactics used by the Nazis in the '30s."
"That it is happening in 21st-century America is beyond belief," he said in a letter to an editor.
"The sheer lawlessness of the INS, the agency that carried out the raid and which is part of the US Department of Justice, is appalling. Whatever happened to constitutional guarantees of due process, equal protection under the law and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty?"
The way INS officials went after Indian programmers was racial profiling, Rekhi, the president of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE), said.
"Racial profiling by a federal agency deployed here makes a mockery of the law," he continued. "The INS rounded up everybody who looked like an Indian. No warrants were required, no distinction was made between citizens and non-citizens."
"Summary justice meted out to people on the spot was designed to make the agency's job easier in the future," he added.
Recently the INS and federal authorities charged wealthy Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Balireddy and his son Vijay Kumar with bringing to America workers, including young girls, by misusing H-1B visas.
"But does that justify what happened at Randolph?" Rekhi asked. "Was there a grave and imminent danger? The crime of working on an Air Force information technology project could have been handled a little more delicately."
Meanwhile, many programmers wonder if they could sue the INS.
"I was arrested because I didn't have the green card with me," said one programmer. "But they took away our documents, including driver's licences, and we had to wait for several days to get them. Wasn't it ironic that while punishing us for not carrying certain documents, these officials took away other documents and IDs?"
INS district director Kenneth Pasquarell told the San Antonio Express-News that the Houston firms may have been involved in "bodyshopping". Firms tell the government they'll place highly skilled foreign workers in jobs that don't exist and then send them to other cities.
In this case, Pasquarell said the companies claimed the workers were in Houston and later shifted them to San Antonio. But Geetha Reddy, chief executive officer of Frontier Consulting, has denied the allegation. She told reporters that she was relieved that the INS had determined that Frontier's employees held proper visas.
"We are committed to conducting business in the most honest, legal and ethical manner possible," she said in a statement.
It is common to list the company's address as the foreigners' place of employment rather than the client's address, she added.
The INS dropped the charges because all Frontier employees accused of visa violation had proper documents to work in San Antonio, Reddy said.
She also said the INS violated its regulations by failing to issue Frontier a "notice to revoke" the visas, which would have given the company an opportunity to rebut the allegations.
Many of the programmers now wish they worked at another location. There are too many unpleasant memories in San Antonio, they said.
"When we were arrested the newspapers and television stations said we were making $50,000 a year," one programmer said. "Imagine what an average American would have thought -- 'These guys are illegal and they make so much money'?"
Most people in San Antonio, a city of over 1 million people, make about $20,000 a year.
"Do people realise that American programmers who are in their 20s and just out of college make more than $75,000 a year?" the Indian programmer asked. "How many people ask us how much we have to pay the subcontractors?"
"On the one hand we are wrongfully arrested and humiliated," he said, raising his voice, "and on the other hand, we are the envy of the world."
Next: Attorney General Dosanjh makes history, becomes first Asian premier in Canada
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