Durbin, Grassley Take Aim At Labor Exploitation In Tech, Finance, Retail Sectors

CHICAGO – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are scrutinizing major corporations who are the biggest users of the H-1B visa program for filing thousands of H-1B visa petitions after conducting mass layoffs of American employees.
In letters to ten major corporations, the Senators are requesting information and data from each company regarding their recruitment and hiring practices, as well as any variation in salary and benefits between H-1B visa holders and American employees.
“In evaluating the high unemployment rate for American tech workers, we cannot ignore the massive, ongoing layoffs ordered by you and your peers in Big Tech C-suites over the past few years … At the same time you have been laying off your employees, you have been filing H-1B visa petitions for [thousands of] foreign workers,”wrote Durbin and Grassley.
“With all of the homegrown American talent relegated to the sidelines, we find it hard to believe that [you] cannot find qualified American tech workers to fill these positions,”concludedDurbin and Grassley.
Durbin and Grassley are longtime partners on H-1B visa reform and the lead authors of theH-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, bipartisan legislation first introduced in 2007 that will reduce fraud and abuse in our immigration system, provide protections for American workers and visa holders, and require more transparency in the recruitment of foreign workers.
The Senators' inquiry comes at a time when the unemployment rate in America’s tech sector is“well above”the overall jobless rate. According to the Federal Reserve, recent American graduates with STEM degrees now face higher unemployment rates than the general population.
For full text of the letters to the ten companies, see below.
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