IFPTE Applauds Sen. Durbin and Sen. Grassley for Introducing the Bipartisan H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Reform Legislation Calls for Comprehensive Overhaul of High-Skill Visa Programs to Protect Outscoring of American Jobs, Uphold Labor Standards and Labor Market Wages, and Not Undermine Domestic STEM Recruitment and Careers
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The executive officers of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), a labor union representing upwards of 90,000 professionals in high skilled occupations across several industries, applauded the introduction of the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Senate Judiciary Committee Member Charles Grassley (R-IA), and cosponsored by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
IFPTE President Matthew Biggs:
“IFPTE applauds the bipartisan reintroduction of Senator Durbin and Senator Grassley’s H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, legislation that our union has advocated for since it was first introduced in 2009. Over the past two years, our nation has made a historic commitment to rebuilding and reinvesting in critical industries including clean energy and green nuclear power, semiconductors, aerospace and defense, infrastructure, and several other industries. For this national industrial strategy to succeed, our nation’s policies and laws have to support good STEM jobs and careers, and high-skill workforce development. That means we have to address how the H-1B, L-1, and B-1 visa programs have lowered job quality, created disincentives for domestic hiring, and resulted in the offshoring of the jobs and skills that are crucial for these industries.
The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act is needed now more than ever, as any national agenda that seeks to strengthen our economic competitiveness and restore economic prosperity for all working people in America must make sure that high-skill work visa programs are used in the limited instances where there are verifiable skills shortages and do not continue to harm American workers, undermine the domestic STEM job market, nor allow employers to underpay and take advantage of workers here on guest worker visas. Alongside our advocacy for this legislation, we continue to request administrative remedies to improve the H-1B visa program and other high-skill work visa programs.”
IFPTE Secretary-Treasurer Gay Henson:
“We thank Senator Durbin and Senator Grassley for continuing to provide leadership on reforming the H-1B program and other high-skill guestworker visas. The H-1B and L-1Visa Reform Act addresses the decades of abuse and fraud in the H-1B visa program by closing loopholes, strengthening labor enforcement, and updating wage and recruitment requirements. Over three decades ago, Congress intended the H-1B visa program to solve a purported shortage of highly skilled workers in specialty occupations. Instead, the H-1B program facilitated a profitable offshore-outsourcing model that routinely displaces high skilled American workers’ jobs, lowers wages and discourages domestic STEM recruitment, and creates a captive workforce whose ability to work and stay in the country is controlled by their employer.
IFPTE members know first-hand about the widespread abuse of the H-1B visa, L-1 visa, and the B-1 visa program by employers. While IFPTE members and union-represented workers have been able to stop efforts to outsource and displace members’ jobs to firms that employ and rely on H-1B workers, it is unmistakable that employer fraud and abuse in the H-1B program has had the predictable effect of shifting bargaining power away from workers. Additionally, the recent layoffs in the tech industry have exposed the vulnerable and precarious circumstances that H-1B workers are caught in. Reforming the H-1B visa program and other high skill work visa programs must be a part of any conversation on investing in the American economy and the U.S. workforce. Our union is committed to building support for the H-1B and L-1Visa Reform Act in the 118th Congress.”
Across the United States and Canada, IFPTE represents 90,000 highly skilled workers in the federal, public, and private sectors. IFPTE is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO and the CLC. More information can be found at www.IFPTE.org.
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