Ramaswamy To Be Keynote Speaker At Alleged ‘Anti-American Foreign Lobby' Event
BY JEFF SKINNER
STATEWIDE - Ohio governor Hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy is set to be the keynote speaker at an upcoming ITServe Alliance event, Synergy 2025, set to take place December 4 and 5. The organization operates as a foreign lobbying group, whose account is managed out of India and whose previous speakers have been vocal opponents of President Trump and his proposed immigration reforms.
ITServe Alliance forwardly positions itself as an association of IT service organizations, a loose conglomerate of ‘IT companies’ banding together with ‘shared’ interests. It claims to represent represents over 2,200 member companies (mostly small-to-mid-sized staffing agencies) that advocate for immigration policies like H-1B visas. While it is U.S.-based and open to all, its leadership, membership, events, and lobbying efforts are overwhelmingly Indian-led and focused on issues affecting Indian tech workers and firms. Its actions, specifically its 2018 lawsuit with the U.S. Government has helped shape immigration law pertaining to H1B Visas and in practice operates more like a foreign government lobbying firm to facilitate foreign remittance schemes by removing immigration regulation.
In 2018, ITServe Alliance sued the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and forced them to remove specific requirements designed to ensure imported labor was necessary and documented properly. Specifically, the lawsuit rescinded the "Contracts and Itineraries Requirements for H-1B Petitions Involving Third-Party Worksites," which required employers petitioning for H-1B workers to provide a specific itinerary with exact dates and locations of work, along with contracts and other evidence, to prove the employer-employee relationship and the specialty occupation status for the entire requested validity period. This would allow for the current, incredibly lax specifications in which staffing agencies can now directly pipeline imported H1B laborers for unspecialized positions.
The provision was implemented during the first Trump administration to combat H1B visa abuse by labor organizations seeking to undercut American laborers. The lawsuit was successful as the courts determined the methodology by which the rule was implemented, that being a memorandum, did not follow proper protocol and procedure for notification of impacted entities. The ramifications of this suit led to the forced reevaluation of over 200 H1B applications from petitioners and untold millions more now permitted.
Over 70 percent of H1B applications currently come from India, a nation which has stated a national goal of flooding the U.S. with roughly 50 million more imported workers over the next 5-10 years to increase the national remittances to $300 billion, a move that would further suck the nation dry at a time when government organizations across the state and country are struggling for keep basic services afloat.
Ramaswamy’s keynote address comes after the organization previously hosted H1B immigration attorney, Sheela Murthy, who had specific antagonistic words to say about President Trump and the ‘poor white women’ who have had to ‘settle’ for marrying him.
Critics of the organization have pointed out it may constitute anti-American sentiment for an organization to position itself essentially as a foreign national lobbying firm designed to replace American workers to grift remittances while speaking vitriol about the nation's leader. It is unclear if this would fall under the USCIS definition of 'anti-American sentiment', which may become a screening criteria for H1B visa applications.
There is no indication what the Ramaswamy speech will entail at the lavish San Juan, Puerto Rico event, but given the audience, it is unlikely to focus on the MAGA political agenda of President Donald Trump, who has stated his intention to pause immigration from third-world nations.
