Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. Senators Questioning Tech Company Use of H1-B Visa Program

An AP newswire article by Suzanne Gamboa, via The Mercury News, reports that:

Two senators are questioning several companies - including firms in Fremont and Mountain View - about their use of a visa program for highly skilled workers.

Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said they are focusing on nine companies, several of them foreign-based, that used nearly 20,000 of the 75,000 H-1B visas that were available last year.

"I continue to hear how people want to increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to companies," Grassley said in a news release. "Considering the high amount of fraud and abuse in the visa program, we need to take a good, hard look at the employers who are using H-1B visas and how they are using them."

Grassley and Durbin, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee, sent letters to the nine companies asking several questions about their visa use, wages and layoffs.

posted by Fergie @ 5/14/2007 04:03:00 PM