Commonly known in the industry as "body shops", desi consultancies act as intermediaries between Indian tech workers and American employers.

For thousands of Indian students and graduates, the H-1B visa represents a ticket to the American dream - a stable technology job, a six-figure salary and, eventually, permanent residency in the United States.

But according to a new book by journalist and film critic Tanul Thakur, that dream often turns into a nightmare involving fake jobs, forged resumes, unpaid wages and threats of deportation.

In 'Wild Wild East: Exiled Americans, Enslaved Indians and the Systemic Abuse of the H-1B Visa Programme', Thakur shines a light on the world of so-called "desi consultancies" — small staffing firms, often run by South Asians, that operate on the fringes of America's technology labour market.

Unlike large Indian IT firms such as TCS or Cognizant, many of these companies do not build products or provide technology services of their own. Their business model revolves around supplying workers to larger firms, universities or Fortune 500 companies through layers of recruiters, subcontractors and staffing vendors.

The model itself is legal and widely used across industries. However, critics argue that some consultancies exploit loopholes in the H-1B system and prey on vulnerable workers desperate for a foothold in the US.

A recruiter promises an IT job, H-1B sponsorship, a comfortable salary and sometimes even a pathway to a green card — often within minutes of speaking to the candidate and without assessing technical skills or experience.

The catch, workers allegedly discover later, is that the promised job either does not exist or is contingent on the consultancy finding a client willing to hire them.

"Many workers arrive in the US only to realise they have effectively been trafficked from India with false promises of employment," Thakur said.

Fresh graduates or professionals from unrelated disciplines are reportedly asked to claim they possess seven or eight years of experience in niche technologies in order to make them employable in a competitive US market.

Some workers are allegedly trained for a few weeks before being sent to interviews where another individual may answer technical questions on their behalf.

Once placed at a client company, they often rely on "on-the-job support" from remote experts who help them perform tasks they were never trained to do.

Thakur describes cases in which several workers are housed together in cramped apartments while waiting for projects. Salaries may be delayed for months, reduced without warning or withheld altogether during periods when workers are "on the bench" and not assigned to clients.

Because their legal status in the US depends on their employer-sponsored visa, many workers feel unable to complain or switch jobs.The fear of losing legal status, deportation or being blacklisted often keeps them silent.

This creates an imbalance of power where employees become dependent on the company that controls their immigration status.

"The combination of cheap labour and unfree labour is what makes the system attractive to bad actors," Thakur argues in the book.

Workers who leave their employer risk losing their immigration status unless they quickly find another sponsor.

However, Thakur stresses that visa fraud is not confined to any one state or community and that individuals from across South Asia participate in the ecosystem.