W-2 forms for all people employed by the petitioner

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wisc_labor_cert

Registered Users (C)
Chennai consulate is asking for "W-2 forms for all people employed by the petitioner" for a H4 VISA.

Employer is reluctant to give this information due to privacy issues and wrote a letter to the consulate indicating the same.

The consulate is sticking to its guns on needing the "W-2 forms of all the employees" and the employer is reluctant to give out that information.

H4 visa has already been rejected twice due to this issue.

What is the recourse in such a situation?

Any help is appreciated.
 
How large is your employer? If you worked for IBM, would the consulate expect to see 100K W2s? That's silly. What about W2Cs? :D

How can the consulate ask for this information? It's probably illegal for your employer to release it (the only entity that get's it is the Dept of Revenue - read IRS), and I'm not sure if if it's legal for them to ask for it. The W2 lists all kinds of confidential data, and they would likely get sued by somone who finds out that someone other than himself, the company's HR, and possibly his tax professional has had unauthorized access to his W2.

Bottomline: They can ask for your W2, but no-one else's.

Now how you can get your point across is another issue - try to find anything online on the IRS website (irs.gov), etc, that mentions about the confidentiality of the information on a W2 - you might also try talking to a tax professional to see if they know of a specific tax law/court judgement, etc that has ruled as such, and bring it to the notice of the stupid consular official who making this unreasonable demand.

All the best.

K
 
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The employer probably is a body shop. In the past many such body shops sprung up solely for the purpose of "employing" a close relative. Chennai Consulate now is aware of this and is asking for information that proves legitimacy of the business.
 
Originally posted by nkm-oct23
The employer probably is a body shop. In the past many such body shops sprung up solely for the purpose of "employing" a close relative. Chennai Consulate now is aware of this and is asking for information that proves legitimacy of the business.
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Employer is not a body shop. It is a small American based product development company which has been in existence for more than 10 years. It has just two H1B employees.
 
Originally posted by PhillyKP
How large is your employer? If you worked for IBM, would the consulate expect to see 100K W2s? That's silly. What about W2Cs? :D

How can the consulate ask for this information? It's probably illegal for your employer to release it (the only entity that get's it is the Dept of Revenue - read IRS), and I'm not sure if if it's legal for them to ask for it. The W2 lists all kinds of confidential data, and they would likely get sued by somone who finds out that someone other than himself, the company's HR, and possibly his tax professional has had unauthorized access to his W2.

Bottomline: They can ask for your W2, but no-one else's.

Now how you can get your point across is another issue - try to find anything online on the IRS website (irs.gov), etc, that mentions about the confidentiality of the information on a W2 - you might also try talking to a tax professional to see if they know of a specific tax law/court judgement, etc that has ruled as such, and bring it to the notice of the stupid consular official who making this unreasonable demand.

All the best.

K
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Thank you for the response. My friends company already did that, they indicated that it would violate privacy laws and so they cannot provide that information. However the consulate is admant about it. The first time they rejected the H4 visa with a laundry list of requests. They submitted all the documents except for this particular request and instead attached a letter explaining why they are not able to submit it. Now they rejected the H4 visa again and repeated their request for w-2 forms of all the employees in the company.
 
I second Ginnu's suggestion - clearly what they are asking for, is illegal. If you cannot yourself find something that explicitly talks about the confidentiality of data on the W2 (IRS website, etc), then talk to an attorney.

I'm not sure how this works - does your application keep going to the same consular official (who is obviously ignorant of the law), or has more than one official asked the same question?

K
 
If you are in legal position, contact Congress Person/Senator. They will help you. I also face the same problem and these guys helped me a lot.

Thanks,
Sunil
 
Originally posted by PhillyKP
I second Ginnu's suggestion - clearly what they are asking for, is illegal. If you cannot yourself find something that explicitly talks about the confidentiality of data on the W2 (IRS website, etc), then talk to an attorney.

I'm not sure how this works - does your application keep going to the same consular official (who is obviously ignorant of the law), or has more than one official asked the same question?

K
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I am not sure if it is illegal for a government department to ask for W2 information for ALL employees. Another branch of government does it all the time, namely the IRS. I also think there is no such law that makes such actions illegal. If I am wrong please point to the relevant section of the law if you know about it.

The reason consulate is asking is to verify legitimacy of the business. If other documents can be provided to prove that the business is legitimate then it should be tried. The consulate just wants to know that there are other employees also working for that business getting paid reasonably and that the business is not a illegal front/body shop. I am not supporting what the consulate is doing (they certainly are taking this a bit too far).
 
Originally posted by nkm-oct23
I am not sure if it is illegal for a government department to ask for W2 information for ALL employees. Another branch of government does it all the time, namely the IRS. I also think there is no such law that makes such actions illegal. If I am wrong please point to the relevant section of the law if you know about it.
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I quote from the ACLU web site:

'WHAT IS THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY?
The right to privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has said that several of the amendments create this right. '

So the long and the short answer I believe, primarily is the 4th amendment, buddy. Off course I'm not a lawyer, so like I said before, wisc needs to talk to one.

Try explaining to a US citizen that in order to process some other employees work visa, his SSN, address, gross and net pay were suddenly made public and shipped to India. You think an american employee will understand the reason and condone this? That's why the company obviously cannot send it over. Then there are also laws which prevent transfer of personal data between countries, for example, and companies have to scramble such data to send it across (trust me, I work with payroll processes).

If the consular official takes it upon himself to validate that a company is indeed a legitimate business, he needs to look at other documents, financial filings, reports, incorporation documents, etc that any legitimate business should have.

wisc_labor_cert, sorry if I sound winded - just wanted to rebut nkm's argument. I'm not adding any more value to this conversation, except take up server space :D so I'm going to stop at this point.

Have a great thanksgiving, everybody. Wisc_labor - hope things work out. Do update us with how the situation is ultimately resolved.

K
 
Just thought I would update the happy ending of this case. My friend's company contacted Congress Person/Senator, but there was not much response. The company finally yielded and gave all the W-2's and the H4 visa got approved.

Thanks for all the responses.
 
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