Bill targeting Indian workers faces hurdles

WASHINGTON — A White House-backed plan to make it harder for Indian outsourcing companies to displace U.S. workers is moving through the U.S. House, but it’s likely to hit a dead end in the Senate, where Republicans and Democrats have little interest in addressing H-1B visas outside of a bigger immigration deal.

For Democrats, the concern is fixing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects from deportation more than 700,000 young people brought illegally into the country as children and which President Donald Trump ordered terminated.

For Senate Republicans, reluctance to advance the House’s H-1B bill reflects a desire to draft a bigger bill that reduces legal immigration by curbing diversity visas and tightening chain migration, which allows immigrants to help family members come to the United States.

The House H-1B legislation, written by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., would make it harder for Indian outsourcing companies to send high-skilled foreign workers to the U.S.

The bill has bipartisan support, a significant feat for any immigration measure in Washington. It also was unanimously endorsed by the House Judiciary Committee, noteworthy considering the wide range of ideologies on a panel that includes Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, one of the staunchest proponents to tightening America’s immigration system, and Illinois Democrat Rep. Luis Gutierrez, one of strongest advocates of keeping DACA beneficiaries in the country.

The issue has drawn more attention as Walt Disney Co., Southern California Edison and the University of California, San Francisco, have been accused of using the H-1B program to lay off American workers.