Grassley, Durbin looking for changes in visa program

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have reached out to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, after the Government Accountability Office also found issues with the initiative’s protections for American workers and how the government tracks participants in the program. 

Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Durbin, the majority whip, wrote in a letter to Napolitano that the G.A.O. report “verifies what we have argued for years – that loopholes in the program have resulted in adverse affects for American and foreign workers.”

Under the H-1B program, U.S. companies are allowed to bring on foreign employees in specialty areas like computer programming and engineering. Under current law, the number of H-1B visas that can be issued in a fiscal year is limited to 65,000, with some exceptions.

According to the G.A.O., the demand for workers in the visa program generally exceeded that cap and largely came from a limited number of companies.

In their letter, Durbin and Grassley asked Napolitano to follow up on a number of the G.A.O.’s findings, including that the government has difficulty tracking how many H-1B workers are in the country, in part because several different agencies play a role in managing the program. 

Adam Fetcher, a Homeland Security spokesman, said Napolitano would respond directly to Grassley and Durbin and that the department was “committed to strengthening the security and integrity of the U.S. immigration system, including the H-1B visa program.”

The two senators also announced that they planned to reintroduce legislation this Congress that would reform the H-1B program.

The G.A.O. report found that the visa initiative is “vulnerable to fraud and abuse” and that fragmented oversight was one of the reasons that worker protections – such as the visa cap and the temporary nature of the visas – were being weakened. It also suggested that, among other things, Congress examine H-1B eligibility requirements.

Homeland Security disagreed with the G.A.O.’s recommendation that it take steps to improve its tracking of H-1B applications, declaring that current policies were sufficient.

The technology industry, which would like to see the visa cap raised, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are among the groups that have supported the H-1B program.