Interesting statement from Steven Griffin:
"I have a very short case study that I would like to share with my friends. As you read it, please consider how many people along the way could have raised their hand and made the right, ethical decision.
Here we go...
· The leaders of a youth sports company decide they want to source cheap labor
· They enlist the help from friends and colleagues in foreign countries to identify young coaches who want to come to the U.S.
· They charge the prospective coaches a “professional development” fee to start the visa process
· More than one executive constructs a detailed scheme to obtain fraudulent visas for these coaches – visas that are intended for professional athletes, not youth soccer coaches
· The executives instruct certain full-time staff to train the prospective coaches on how to navigate the interview process at the foreign embassies
· They even advise the coaches to go to certain embassies that seem less diligent than others and stay away from those embassies that have denied these visas in the past
· Certain full-time staff prepare and distribute a script that instructs the coaches on how to mislead the embassies
· Certain professional soccer clubs - let’s say NWSL or MLS teams - act as sponsors or petitioners for these coaches knowing that the coach will never work for their club, never be on their payroll, never live in the area, never be at their facility. Yet they complete and sign immigration documents to the contrary
· Very senior people, maybe even certain owners, at these professional clubs understand the scheme
· The youth soccer company compensates the professional clubs for their role in the scheme - pays a per-visa fee
· Once in the U.S., the coaches are often underpaid, some are forced into unacceptable living arrangements, occasionally threatened, and located in states that are inconsistent with their visa applications – often resulting in inappropriate payroll tax treatment
· Oh, one more thing… the parent company’s senior executives (including accounting officers) are aware of the visa legal expenses, fees paid to the professional clubs, travel costs to bring the coaches to the U.S., the types of visas (for which youth coaches don’t qualify) and they look the other way.
. Actually, they didn’t look the other way. They capitalized these expenses as prepaid assets on the balance sheet so they wouldn’t negatively impact earnings in the current year
I can’t even count how many people along the way could have stepped in and made the right decision.
It’s time to tell the truth and clean up youth sports.:
