Senator Chuck Grassley is pressing the Bush Administration to follow through on its promises to address problems in the visa program that helps American businesses hire foreign workers for high-skilled jobs. On Monday afternoon, Grassley fired off a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff outlining his concerns about what’s called these visas.
"We’re trying to get at it from two angles…Whether or not there’s adequate FBI clearance of these individuals and lastly, the fact that it takes so long to get it done that the business needs, where they’re legitimate, aren’t met and that’s bad for the economy," Grassley says. According to Grassley, fraud and abuse in the program has been widely documented, yet Grassley says hasn’t seen "one thing from the Bush administration" to fix it.
"Where is the reform that the administration promised last August because quite frankly last August we thought that we were going to get the necessary changes that needed to be made," Grassley says. "…Why isn’t it happening? What’s it going to take to make it happen?"
Grassley is co-sponsor of legislation that seeks to help U.S. companies that need highly-skilled workers and can’t find Americans to fill the jobs while at the same time increasing penalties for businesses that exploit the visa process to hire foreigners rather than qualified Americans for high-paid posts.