Can no one from Aberdeen run an honest visa operation?
The local press picks up a story this week about a September 1, 2015, ruling from a Department of Labor administrative law judge barring an Aberdeen employment contractor from the federal HB-2A visa program for three years.
Evidently Kevin Opp of Aberdeen-based Employment USA LLC helped Volga dairy Old Tree Farms LLC get permanent foreign workers under H-2A visas, which are only supposed to go to temporary workers. Opp put false information on the H-2A applications submitted to USCIS:
Opp worked with a dairy farm, known as Old Tree Farms LLC, in preparing forms for 10 temporary farmworker jobs, the judge said. He also allegedly prepared forms for a new company created by the dairy farm’s owners, called Verpaalen Custom Service.
One of the owners, Johanna Verpaalen, testified at a hearing that she and her husband had partly created VCS to extend the time that H-2A workers could be employed at their farm, according to the order. She reportedly said that Employment USA had told her that she could employ the H-2A workers for a longer time if she created a second company to sponsor them.
Judge Cowell said email evidence indicates that Opp and other Employment USA staff were the “architects” of the alleged scheme to lengthen the H-2A dairy farm workers employment through VCS.
“Opp assisted OTF in creating a second sham company to conceal the fact that it sought to obtain a second temporary labor certification during the same year that would enable it to employ H-2A workers on the same farm on a year-round basis,” Judge Cowell wrote.
Based on Verpaalen’s testimony, the judge found that Opp had created job descriptions and statements of temporary need that were intended to show a seasonal need for workers at what appeared to be two different companies, even though he knew that VCS was basically the same dairy farm as Old Tree Farms. He also deemed Opp’s testimony to be “evasive, self-serving, and inconsistent.”
“Opp‘s efforts to defy H-2A program requirements and aid [the employers in breaking the law are exceptional,” Judge Cowell said.
The judge therefore found that Employment USA and Opp knowingly provided inaccurate information on Form I-129, as well as Forms ETA 790 and 914, in an effort to secure temporary labor certification for jobs that would not have qualified for the H-2A program.
Old Tree Farms and Verpaalen Custom Services have already accepted liability for their involvement in the alleged scheme, have agreed to a three-year debarment, and have consented to paying penalties and back wages, according to the order [Allissa Wickham, “H-2A Disbarment for Agent Co.’s Temp Worker Scheme Upheld,” Law360.com, 2015.09.02].
Opp said in September he would appeal.
And now the bonus for attentive readers: did you hear that Dutch name, Verpaalen?
Yup. Several years ago, Franciscus and Johanna Verpaalen’s dairy received $1.5 million in EB-5 investment thanks to the efforts of fellow Dutchman and Aberdonian Joop Bollen, whose cheese the state is now trying to hang in the wind for getting South Dakota booted from EB-5.
There must be a map in some USCIS office with a big red flag pinned to Aberdeen, South Dakota.
So the farmer agreed to their mistake and take responsibility and pay fines etc. but Opp does not. My guess is that Opp would be a lawyer who set up something illegal and does not want to be seen as wrong. If he is not a lawyer then I am just prejudiced against lawyers because I have seen them mess up before and not ever admit it.
Shocked! Shocked that there’s corruption here! Mercer just made iced tea come out my nose: “‘I told him (Wink) I would help make it happen,” Schoenbeck said.”
http://my605.com/pierrereview/?p=12700
Let’s be clear that this is the FEDERAL Department of Labor that lowered the boom on these fraudsters.
Ironic that this farm is trying to gain visas for rich foreigners by creating jobs using dummied up visas for poor foreigners. Was this really the intent of EB-5?
Uncovering fraud in SD is like peeling layers from an onion. And Roger, you want to see lawyers not taking responsibility for their mistakes look no farther than Dennis Daugaard and Marty Jackley.
Congratulations to illegal immigrant hiring former Daugaard Secretary of Ag and his bucket carrying minion Lucas Lentsch for this corruption. They faithfully pushed the CAFO dairys on every poor community they could grease skids to run over.
How many of their big “state dairies” have gone bankrupt and screwed their investors over? Hard to keep track of all the failed crony-capitalism projects Rounds and Daugaard foisted on South Dakotans.
Oh but Disgusted, it goes back to MM Rounds and his Ag secretary Larry Gabriel, with his ads in foreign magazines, offering EB-5 monies to foreigners to come here and start CAFO dairy operation. The only problem with that is the hiring of illegals and the forcing out of the few smaller dairy operations that were left.
Just imagine if the State of SD had taken some of its economic development monies, as startup loans and distributed it to young startup South Dakota dairy operators to have smaller operations and keep more people on the land. We would have less pollution of our waters and more people making an honest living doing meaningful work, and less need for illegal immigrants to do the hard work necessary to run a large dairy operation, like the land and water polluting 17,000 dairy herd near Veblen.
You’re right, Lanny. This push for big dairies in East River spans more than a decade now, and it seems to be built on disregard for the law at every turn, whether we’re talking immigration or environment.
South Dakota: Land of Infinite Vice.
I heard a trailer burned up in Deuel County a few years ago and an immigrant worker was found dead inside it. And no mention was ever made in the local media of who he was or of how he got there. Where does this sort of documentation fraud turn up if there is an unattended death somewhere and the DCI is compelled to investigate it as they are and do? What does their report say about the perosn who died? Who was he and how did he get there?
Chris, I have no new info for you there. Does DCI just close the books and not bother to dig further?
South Dakota is full of unattended deaths that have warranted no investigation. That is just how it works out here in the Wild West, Chris.
Start with the known suicides and look for anything past a local coroner’s signature.
Unfortunately, Opp was/is not the only agent in the foreign labor recruitment business serving South Dakota. These agents are not licensed or regulated by any board, so employers should research who they are trusting. It is very rare for an agent to be held responsible in these types of cases, so major kudos to Wage and Hour for bringing this case to court (almost unprecedented) and for the judge to see the pompous Mr. Opp for who he is. Usually, the employer takes the fall and the agent goes on his or her merry way.
Bob, who else in South Dakota is helping dairies and other employers land H-2A visa workers? Any idea where all these workers are being placed? Are agencies like these necessary middlemen?
US v. Texas, where else? Executive immigration policies are being attacked.
…in the Obama era, the Heritage Foundation has pushed conservative law professors to develop a more robust theory of the Take Care Clause.
If Roberts signs off on it, his court will be flooded with highly political lawsuits that will make …[t]he Supreme Court … just another player in a partisan battle, not a lofty third branch perched above politics.
There is really no way to see United States v. Texas as anything but a bitterly partisan dispute between Republican governors and a Democratic executive. Of the 26 states bringing the suit, 26 are controlled by Republican executives.
[THIS IS RAGA I HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU ABOUT]
If this fact makes you question whether the Constitution doesn’t have some safeguard in place to prevent governors from suing a president over a purely political dispute, I have good news: It does. In order to sue the government, a plaintiff must have “standing”—that is, a specific, personalized injury inflicted by the allegedly unlawful government action. As John Roberts explained in 1993, standing rules are designed to keep the judiciary out of the “generalized grievances” that consume “the political branches.”
slate, cont.
The nation’s high court will likely take up Texas v. United States in April. The arguments will focus on Obama’s executive order, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, which would shield more than 4 million undocumented immigrants in the country from deportation proceedings and allow them to apply for a three-year work permit.
***
And to be clear it’s certainly not a partisan issue. It does not matter who is in The White House. http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/020316_tx_immigration_case/lawyers-texas-talk-strategy-supreme-court-immigration-hearing/