Senators accuse companies of immigration-law abuses

From Illinois Business Journal news services

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, is among a bipartisan group of 10 colleagues calling for an investigation of potential abuses by companies of the H-1B visa program.

The senators today wrote to three federal agencies – the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Labor – about concerns that U.S. companies are using the H-1B visa program to cut wage costs by laying off American workers. The letter comes two days after the annual cap for H-1B visas was reached. While some companies argue that this demand for H-1B visas demonstrates the need to increase the annual cap, the largest users of the H-1B program are foreign companies that specialize in outsourcing American jobs, Durbin’s office said.

“A number of U.S. employers, including some large, well-known, publicly-traded corporations, have reportedly laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders. To add insult to injury, many of the replaced American employees report that they have been forced to train the foreign workers who are taking their jobs,” the senators wrote.

The letter was signed by Durbin and Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Sherrod Brown, -Ohio, David Vitter, R-La., Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Bill Cassidy, R-La., Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.

Here is a text of the letter:

We are concerned about recent information that has come to light regarding the abuse of the H-1B visa program by Southern California Edison (SCE) and other employers to replace large numbers of American workers. We urge you to investigate this matter.

A number of U.S. employers, including some large, well-known, publicly-traded corporations, have reportedly laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders. To add insult to injury, many of the replaced American employees report that they have been forced to train the foreign workers who are taking their jobs. This troubling practice seems to be particularly concentrated in the information technology (IT) sector, which is not surprising given that sixty five percent of H-1B petitions approved in FY 2014 were for workers in computer-related occupations. Though such reports of H-1B-driven layoffs have been circulating for years, their frequency seems to have increased dramatically in the past year alone.

In many cases it appears that the H-1B workers are not employees of the U.S. company laying off American workers, but instead are contractors employed by foreign-owned IT consulting companies. This increasingly popular business practice by U.S. companies and foreign-owned IT outsourcing firms raises several questions. For example, have the U.S. companies that have laid off American workers and replaced them with H-1B workers and/or the IT consulting contractors the companies retained engaged in prohibited citizenship status discrimination against U.S. citizens? Did the Labor Condition Applications certified by the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration and the petitions approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for each H-1B visa holder who replaced a U.S. worker at these companies accurately reflect the scope and location of their work? Did such labor condition applications or visa petitions show any evidence of misrepresentation or fraud by the employer-petitioners? Did the employer-petitioners maintain a true employer-employee relationship with the H-1B workers after they were placed at the U.S. client company? While media reports indicate that the H-1B visa program is the principal visa program at issue in the layoffs, were other visa programs, such as the L-1B or the B-1, also used to displace American workers at U.S. companies?

We respectfully request that you investigate the unacceptable replacement of American workers by H-1B workers to ascertain whether SCE or any other U.S. companies that have engaged in this practice, or the IT consulting companies supplying those companies with H-1B workers, have violated the law. Additionally, please notify us of any obstacles in existing law to conducting such an investigation.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.