(Washington, DC) U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, responded to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed today enforcing and reviewing the H-1B Visa program.
Grassley, along with U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), authored legislation that would reform the H-1B and L-1 skilled work visa programs.
“The H-1B program was designed to fill gaps in America’s workforce with highly-skilled foreign workers, but as we’ve seen in recent years, the program has been abused and exploited at the expense of American workers and most-qualified foreign workers. We’ve seen companies use the program to fire American workers and replace them with lower-paid foreign counterparts. The visa lottery system makes this problem worse by rewarding visas randomly, instead of prioritizing foreign workers with greater experience, skill, and qualifications,” Grassley said.
“I’ve introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Durbin to address these problems, and I’ve expressed to President Trump the need to take action to restore the integrity in the H-1B Program. I’m grateful that President Trump has taken my suggestions to heart by taking steps today to protect American workers and preserve limited H-1B visas for truly qualified, high-skilled foreign workers,” he added.
Grassley and Durbin’s bill was introduced to protect American workers from H-1B abuse and prioritize visas based on the applicant’s merits rather than the general lottery system. The Senate Judiciary Committee during the last Congress held a hearing exploring H-1B abuse and its impact on American workers. Recent media accounts have illustrated how such schemes are costing American workers their jobs.