TP-Link USB Wi-Fi dongle won't detect any wireless networks This is the second Wi-Fi card I am trying, so I am confident that it is not the card in question that is not working correctly.

I have macOS High Sierra running 10.13.5 with a TP-Link Archer T4UH with the official drivers installed from TP's website.

Everything appears to be in working order, however no matter what I do I cannot get the network to display.

I am running Mac OS X in a VM. But to my mind this shouldn't make any difference at all.

I pass the usb dongle directly into the Guest. No longer having access to this device in the host.

Below is what I see:








Update

After using an older version of OSx I have got the wireless to work internally. 



Showing my setup
As Allan has mentioned in the comments, what you're trying to do (or perhaps how you're trying to approach this) is not possible.

Let's assume you're using Parallels (if not, it doesn't matter - this is just an example). And let's assume you're running Parallels on an iMac and you've installed Windows 10 on a virtual machine (again, an example - I know you're talking about an OS X guest). 

Now, for the guest OS (regardless of what it is) to access the internet or a network, it needs to access that network via the host in some way. Typically you'll have options for using a Shared, Bridged or Host-only network. All of these still require the network (or adapter) to be running on the host machine. 

Some tips:


If your goal is to connect to the internet from your guest machine, then you wouldn't use the Host-only (or equivalent) option. 
If what you're trying to do is have your virtual machine treated as a stand-alone computer on the network and configured in the same way as a real one, then you'd use the Bridged network option. This allows your guest to access the network and internet using the adapter you've connected to the internet (assuming you've set this up properly on the host machine). Just to be clear, the adapter must be installed, recognised and running on the host machine!
If you're wanting your guest to share all the network connections available on the host machine (including the internet), then just choose the Shared Network (or equivalent) option.


In my case I always use the Shared Network option in my virtual machines. This allows the Network Address Translation (NAT) feature to work on the virtual machine and is usually the most reliable option (at least in my experience). The only exception to this is if I need a stand-alone virtual machine totally segregated from the internet, in which case I would use the Host-only option.