An Indian-American X user who claimed to have zero allegiance to India resisted the 'fake degree' narrative on social media and said not all Indian degrees are fake. India has highly prestigious colleges where 1 in 100 or 1000 get admission and people graduating from those colleges do not have fake degrees. The narrative started after a Fox News segment claimed that the majority of the H-1B applications from India were fraudulent. The claim was based on former US diplomat Mahvash Siddiqui's old statement. Siddiqui worked at a US consulate in India from 2005 to 2007 and her observation pertained to that period of time but Fox News made a general claim that India gives fake degrees, their H-1B applications are fraudulent. The fake degree claim was based on local police in India seizing counterfeit certificates.
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The claims got fanned on social media as several Conservative commentators shared the Fox News clip. Senator Eric Schmitt doubled down on the H-1B visa program and called it an international crisis. Over several X posts, the senator said the Biden administration did not check the foreign degrees of the H-1B applicants while they took American jobs. "These fakes cross borders. Unverified credentials in critical U.S. jobs create massive safety risks, to patients, our infrastructure, our national security. All while laid-off American workers train replacements. Enough. This is an international crisis, not just here but throughout the West. And India's response is to tell us to speed up the process?" Schmitt wrote.
