A visa fraud case comes back around
The Justice Department has filed a civil complaint to revoke the U.S. citizenship of Neeraj Sharma, the former CEO and owner of Magnavision LLC, an IT staffing company in New Jersey. According to federal officials, Sharma used his business to push fake H-1B visa petitions tied to jobs that did not exist. It is the kind of thing that gives immigration law a bad name and makes honest applicants pay the price for someone else’s greed.
Eleven petitions, forged letters, and fake bank jobs
Federal filings say that between April 2015 and April 2017, Sharma signed and submitted eleven H-1B petitions under penalty of perjury. Each one claimed foreign workers had landed full-time jobs at a major national bank, but investigators say those jobs were fake. The petitions allegedly included forged letters on bank letterhead and forged signatures from bank executives. Sharma supposedly knew the documents were fake and used his own role as a contracted business analyst at the bank to make the scheme look real. That is not clever entrepreneurship. It is plain old fraud dressed up in a necktie.
He said no, then became a citizen anyway
Sharma became a permanent resident in 2012 and filed for naturalization in April 2017 while the visa scheme was still underway. In his application and later in sworn testimony, he answered no when asked whether he had committed crimes, given false documents to the government, or lied to gain immigration benefits. USCIS approved the application, and he took the oath of allegiance on December 7, 2017. In 2019, he was arrested and charged with visa fraud and naturalization fraud, then later pleaded guilty to fraud and misuse of visas. A federal judge sentenced him in 2021 to ten months of home detention and three years of probation.
Trump Justice Department says citizenship must be earned
Now the Trump Justice Department is seeking to strip away the citizenship that Sharma obtained through what it calls concealment, misrepresentation, false testimony, and a lack of good moral character during the legal window that mattered. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said criminal aliens who abuse the naturalization process should face consequences, while DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said citizenship is a privilege that must be earned honestly. The case is part of a broader push to target people who gamed the system and then tried to wrap themselves in the flag after the fact.
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