US Congressman Riley Moore.
“And the typical H-1B visa holder, by the way, brings 10 individuals of their family with them. The proposal seeks to remove a provision under 8 CFR 214.1(c)(5) that requires US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to give deference to an earlier approval when an extension petition involves the same parties and underlying facts.
“We had about 650,000 kids, give or take, graduate with computer science, computer programming degrees in this country last year, and then issued over half a million H-1B visas,” Moore said during an interview with Scott Jennings on The Scott Jennings Show, broadcast by the Salem News Channel. He said the programme was promoted as a way to bring highly skilled professionals into the country to fill positions that American employers could not staff with domestic workers. “What it is, is importing cheap labor that is undercutting a lot of our young college graduates who are coming out of school with accounting degrees and other types of degrees, computer science, things like that, that are ready to enter the workforce,” he said. The congressman also claimed that H-1B visa holders bring family members to the US, linking the programme to what he described as “chain migration”. So you have this whole chain migration thing that goes with it,” Moore said.
Moore argued that the H-1B programme, which is intended to help US employers recruit skilled foreign workers for specialised occupations, was not operating as originally presented. However, he alleged that companies were using it to hire cheaper foreign labour instead.