Immigration Reform: H-1B Restrictions Proposed For Companies That Lay Off 50 Workers or More

Senators Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Charles Grassley (Iowa) have introduced legislation that would bar any company that lays off 50 or more employees from hiring foreign workers. The two lawmakers have already added H1B hiring restrictions to the financial bailout bill earlier this year, Computerworld reports. The new proposed legislation, called Employ America Act, can potentially affect a broad range of tech firms that continue hiring after laying off large numbers of employees. It will also apply to companies that hire H2B visa workers. H2B visas are mostly used in construction, health care, food service, and other industries.
“With the unemployment rate over 10%, companies that undertake mass layoffs shouldn’t need to hire foreign guest workers when there are plenty of qualified Americans looking for jobs,” said Grassley. According to the two senators, the high-tech industry alone has laid off more than 340,000 workers since August 2008.
In February, the senators proposed to prohibit the financial services firms that received money from the government TARP program from hiring H1B holders. That restriction wasn’t adopted, however Congress agreed to make any company receiving TARP funds “H1B dependent” regardless of the number of visa holders on the payroll. Generally a company is considered “H1B dependent” when more than 15 percent of their employees are on H1B visas. Such companies must make good faith effort to hire U.S. workers before they can use foreign labor.
Earlier this year Grassley, along with another U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (Illinois), introduced the H1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2009 that is supposed to set a number of restrictions on H1B use, including the provision aimed at Indian outsourcing firms to prohibit any company with more than 50 employees from having more than half of their workforce on H1B or L-1 visas. The legislation also has some anti-fraud provisions and sets higher salary levels for visa holders.
On the other hand, U.S. Representative Jeff Flake (Arizona) has proposed legislation to increase the H1B cap and exempt foreign graduates of U.S. Ph.D. programs from counting toward it.
However, the prospects for any immigration-related legislation are uncertain and unlikely to pass as the Senate is expected to receive an immigration reform bill next year.