As many as 64 Senators voted to invoke cloture and 35 in the Chamber voted against it yesterday, an indication that the comprehensive reform measure still faces considerable opposition on Capitol Hill.
According to the rules of the Senate, a cloture vote that seeks to reopen debate on the Bill's amendments and seeing a final vote requires the backing of 60 lawmakers. The Democratic Majority Leader, Harry Reid has assured that every one of the amendments including that of the H-1B visas would be debated and voted upon in the coming days.
The original version of the bipartisan Bill had a provision to increase the H-1B numbers from the present 65,000 to 115,000 with built in annual increases. But two Senators, Richard Durbin and Chuck Grassley, have an amendment to the Immigration Bill on the H1B and the L-1 visas that seeks to tighten considerably what potential employers can and cannot do with high skilled jobs.
Coming out of a closed door policy lunch, Senator Reid acknowledged that the H-1B visas have been a point of discussion leading right up to the cloture vote. "I'm going to take a look at all those. We had a conversation right before the vote on motion to proceed to cloture on H-1B. All that stuff is... moving around, and I'll study each amendment and try to do the right thing," Senator Reid said in response to a querry.
Senator Durbin of Illinois had earlier announced that the provisions of "The H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007", he introduced earlier this year with Senator Grassley of Iowa, have been added to the Kennedy-Kyl immigration reform compromise bill.
Durbin's bill would overhaul the H-1B and L-1 visa programmes to give priority to US workers and crack down on unscrupulous employers who deprive qualified Americans of high-skill jobs.
"Our immigration policy should seek to complement our US workforce, not replace it. Some employers have abused the H-1B and L-1 temporary work visa programmes, using them to bypass qualified American job applicants. I want to set up safeguards for American workers, and provide much-needed over sight and enforcement of employers who fail to abide by the law," Senator Durbin has said.
He also pointed out that under the current law, only employers that employ H-1B visa holders as a large percentage of their US workforce are required to pledge that they have tried to find US workers before bringing in foreign workers and that the H-1B visa holder will not displace an American worker.
The bill would require that H-1B employers may not advertise a job as available only for H-1B visa holders or recruit only H-1B visa holders for a job. The amendment would prohibit companies from hiring H-1B employees if they employ more than 50 people and more than 50 per cent of their workers are H-1B visa holders and hold out penalties for employers who violate H-1B programme requirements.
Under the original Bill the department of labour was given the ability to conduct random audits of any company that uses the H-1B program, and would require DOL to conduct annual audits of companies with more than 100 employees that have 15 per cent or more of those workers on H-1B visas.
