North Cook News

U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced a bill on Tuesday to reform the H-1B visa program.

The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act aims to prevent abuse of the visa system and ensure qualified U.S. workers have priority over others for highly skilled jobs.

“Reforming the H-1B and L-1 visa programs is a critical component of fixing our broken immigration system and must be included in comprehensive immigration-reform legislation,” Durbin said. “For years, foreign outsourcing companies have used loopholes in the laws to displace qualified American workers and facilitate the outsourcing of American jobs. The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act would end these abuses and protect American and foreign workers from exploitation. I thank Senator Grassley for partnering with me on this important bipartisan legislation.”

The senators first introduced this legislation in 2007. The current reform bill requires that companies recruit qualified Americans before hiring H-1B employees. It also seeks to prevent companies from hiring additional H-1B and L-1 visa holders if the company employs more than 50 people and more than 50 percent hold visas. This prevents employers from importing large numbers of visa holders for training, then sending the jobs and newly trained workers overseas.

“The H-1B visa program was never meant to replace qualified American workers, but it was instead intended as a means to fill gaps in highly specialized areas of employment that cannot be filled by Americans," Grassley said. "The abuse of the system is real, and media reports are validating what we have argued against for years, including the fact that Americans are training their replacements.”