Republican Issa kicks off immigration reform

Bipartisan agreement is hard to come by, but Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has found an issue that has support in both parties: protecting the jobs of American information technology (IT) workers.

On Friday, Issa reintroduced legislation in the House aimed at modifying H-1B visas, a program many companies use to hire foreign IT workers. Fellow Californian and Democratic Rep. Scott Peters also supported the bill, which would force companies to pay workers from foreign countries salaries comparable with U.S.-born employees.

During the last congressional session, Issa’s legislation faced fierce headwinds from another bipartisan group, the senators known as the Gang of Eight. If passed, their bill would have increased the number of H-1B visas available to tech companies. Instead, both bills ran into something much more complex: overall immigration reform.

In 1990, Congress adopted the H-1B visa program to help companies fill shortages of skilled scientists and engineers. As demand for qualified IT professionals outstripped the supply of U.S. workers, companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft persuaded lawmakers to expand the H-1B program. But critics say companies use the law not just to fill shortages but also to replace available American employees with cheaper immigrant workers.

Leo Perrero, an IT professional who worked for 10 years at Disney, says U.S. companies are hurting livelihoods of American workers for the sake of increased profit. Last year, he told a Senate subcommittee about the 90-day training that foreign workers underwent before replacing him and his colleagues: “If our own pool of IT professionals were so incompetent then why would companies like Disney, and many others, have us train our replacements?”

Most tech industry executives support expanding the H-1B visa program. President-elect Donald Trump did not take a firm stand on the issue, and his comments during a mid-December summit encouraged tech execs.