WASHINGTON — Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) announced Tuesday morning with his colleague Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) that the U.S. Department of Labor has launched an investigation into two outsourcing companies accused of helping a utilities company in California fire American employees in favor of foreign workers in the country with controversial H-1B visas.
“We’re pleased to hear that the Labor Department is taking a first step to stanch this tide of visa abuse,” Sessions said in a press release. “A number of U.S. employers, including some large, well-known, publicly-traded corporations, have laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders. To add insult to injury, many of the replaced American employees report that they have been forced to train the foreign workers who are taking their jobs. That’s just plain wrong and we’ll continue to press the Administration to help solve this problem. We look forward to the outcome of the Labor Department’s investigation.”
In April, Sens. Sessions and Durbin, along with bipartisan group of eight of their peers in the Senate, wrote letters to the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Labor asking the federal agencies to pursue the investigation against foreign outsourcing companies Infosys and Tata for their role in replacing American employees at Southern Cal Edison with cheaper foreign labor.
In March Sessions slammed Southern Cal Edison for treating its employees like “commodities.”
“People aren’t commodities,” Sessions said passionately during a Judiciary Committee hearing. “We compare labor to commodities, but they’re not commodities. They’re human beings. They have families. They have hopes and dreams. They want stability in their life.”
In his press release Tuesday morning, Sessions shared that the annual cap for H-1B visas was already reached more than a month ago, causing corporations to claim that the demand for workers exceeds what the American labor force can provide.
Sessions has long rejected that claim, saying that there are plenty of highly-skilled American workers willing and able to perform the technical jobs the H-1B visas are supposed to support, it is simply corporations desiring a workforce that won’t demand quite as high of a salary.
“Congress represents the people of the United States,” the Senator said back in March. “And yes, bringing in talent is a good thing, but we have no obligation to yield to the lusts of big businesses. They all want more profits and lower pay for workers, that’s just what they do.”
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
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