Senators complain about visa abuse

As the H-1B visa debate rages on Capitol Hill, two U.S. senators, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), charge that offshoring firms are "abusing the system" through the use of another category of visas, something called the L visas. The two released a list of top users of L visas: they claim there is a connection between use of those visas and the H-1B by offshoring companies. L visas are used by multinational companies to transfer employees from overseas locations to offices in the U.S. They don't have some of the restrictions that H-1B visas do, such as a requirement that workers be paid wages that are on par with the prevailing salaries of American workers. In the federal government's 2006 fiscal year, which ended last September, applications for more than 53,000 L visas were approved. That was up from about 49,400 in fiscal 2005.

For more:
- see this ComputerWorld article