Sen. Charles Grassley has recently written letter to the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker Pelosi promoting some legislation he's supporting—S.1035, which is supposed to lower the level of H-1b fraud.

The thing is, a program like H-1b will inevitably displace US workers unless it is very carefully structured. Competent oligarchs in countries like Singapore manage guest worker programs with a degree of careful structure. A similar program for a democratic nation will require even more care.

The fundamental problem is that each H-1b visa has a market value of around $50,000. When something that valuable is given to companies free of charge, they rapidly become addicted to this corporate welfare—and learning to live without that corporate welfare will be very difficult for the companies involved.

All S. 1035 does is raise the bar for abuse—and focus the corporate welfare aspect of guest worker visas abuse.