Bipartisan Coalition Calls for Investigation of H-1B Visa Use at SoCal Edison

A bipartisan coalition of Senators, led by Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), and Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, asking them to investigate Southern California Edison’s use of the H-1B guest worker program to replace American workers.

As NumbersUSA reported previously, Southern California Edison (SCE) has been laying off 400 of its tech workers since last August, so they can be replaced with foreign guest workers on H-1B visas. The company expects another 100 workers to be affected through this year.

In the letter, the Senators state that “A number of U.S. employers, including some large, well-known, publicly-traded corporations, have reportedly 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.”

They close out the letter with a call on the aforementioned members of the Obama Administration to “investigate the unacceptable replacement of American workers by H-1B workers to ascertain whether SCE or any other U.S. companies that have engaged in this practice, or the IT consulting companies supplying those companies with H-1B workers, have violated the law.”

The letter was also signed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), David Vitter (R-La.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Jim Inhofe (R-Ok.).

Read the full letter