By admin 
TEMPE, AZ (AZFamily) — A new federal task force is investigating Arizona State University and eight other elite universities, accusing them of visa fraud that officials say undermines American graduate students and researchers.
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Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Department of Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito announced the investigation Thursday morning during a press conference focused primarily on H-1B visas, the program that lets U.S. companies sponsor foreign workers for green cards. Vance said Microsoft is being suspended from that program amid fraud concerns.
Vance then pivoted to a separate program: J-1 visas, used for exchange visitors, including researchers and scholars.
He said several of the nation’s “most elite universities” are relying on the J-1 program to bring in foreign workers at the expense of American researchers’ wages, including ASU.
The nine universities under investigation
The nine universities now under investigation by the newly formed Visa Fraud Strike Team are:
- Harvard
- Yale
- Stanford
- Brown
- University of Pittsburgh
- UC Davis
- Caltech
- Arizona State University
- MIT
According to Vance and D’Esposito, these nine schools use J-1 visas for roughly 61% of federally funded research positions, compared to a national average of about 38%.
“Something weird is going on at these universities,” Vance said, accusing the schools of using the visas to undercut wages for American graduate students and researchers. “It simply has to stop.”
Phoenix-based attorney Josh Kolsrud says the J-1 visa program was enacted by Congress as a way to bring some of the brightest minds from around the world to the U.S. to conduct research.
“Just because a university is saving money and paying J-1 visa applicants to do research positions, that’s not illegal,” he said.
Subpoenas served, warnings issued
D’Esposito said subpoenas have already been served and investigations are underway at all nine schools.
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“Nobody will be getting a free pass because their name is carved into an expensive building,” he said.
D’Esposito accused the universities of improperly using J-1 visa classifications “to avoid employment obligations, exploit taxpayer-funded programs, and undermine American workers,” adding that such conduct “will not be tolerated.”
“American taxpayers send billions of dollars to these universities,” D’Esposito said. “They deserve to know where that money is going and whether it’s being used lawfully.”
He went further, warning that any university found breaking the law “to save a dollar while exposing American research to a foreign adversary” is committing “institutional betrayal,” not academic excellence.
D’Esposito issued a stark warning to the institutions under investigation.
“I don’t care how prestigious a university thinks it is,” he said. “Break the law, and screw the American people, and I will personally cuff you in the university square. I don’t care how large your endowment is, how powerful your alumni are.”
ASU responds
Arizona’s Family reached out to ASU for comment. In a statement, ASU said:
As one of the largest research universities in the United States, Arizona State University educates more stem majors than any other university and employs one of the largest technical and scientific workforces in the country. This benefits both the Arizona and the United States economies and in doing so, ASU has hired the talent needed to perform these functions and done so in complete compliance with existing United States policy and law.
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