H1B visa programme draws flak

WASHINGTON: A top Republican Congressman has slammed the H1B visa programme, saying that there was no mechanism to find out if anyone, whose time has expired, has left the country and there was little penal action against those overstaying the visa.

Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo, who is also a Presidential candidate has argued that even though Congress had authorised the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to put in place an entry-exit system, which should have been operational since January this year, it is nith Fox News on the subject of the H1B visas in the context of the role of doctors in England in the bombings.

"The H-1B has been really a problem for a long time. The fraud inside that particular visa programme is enormous and I have come out in opposition to it long before the events in London," he said.

Tancredo was critical of the rationale behind the visa programme.

"The reason is that the programme itself was set up in order to bring in people with unique skills -- unique - we cannot find them anywhere else in the United States, and there's one or two individuals throughout the world that may have it. And so that's why we have an H-1B programme, unique skills," Tancredo said in response to a question.

"What has happened is that it has been simply used as a way of getting cheap labour into the US for higher-echelon jobs, for white-collar jobs. We have never, ever, not one person has ever been prosecuted here for overstaying that visa," he added.

People like Bill Gates who have been pushing for expanding H-1B visas, so that more of those people can come from countries like India.

"That's exactly right. They have. And the reason, of course, is because they're cheaper...it's got really very little to do with experience or ability," he said adding that if he became President he would tighten up the H1B process particularly going after the visa over-stayers.

There are probably six to seven lakh H-1B overstays in the US today, he said. "This is because we have never checked on a single one of them to make sure they go back. Because there is absolutely...no  system," Tancredo said.

He said the Congress authorized ICE to actually put in place an entry-exit system. It was supposed to be in  place January this year. "It's not in place. They're telling us, we don't know that it will ever get in place. Right now, anybody can come into this  country with a visa. They can leave when it's time," the Republican law maker said.