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Requirement to hire American workers first. Too many visas, like the H-1B, have no such requirement. In the year 2015, with 92 million Americans outside the workforce and incomes collapsing, we need companies to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to the unemployment office, not USCIS.

Cruz' written plan is essentially the same with the added point that companies who have defrauded the use of H-1B visas should be barred from using the program:

Suspend the issuance of all H-1B visas for 180 days to complete a comprehensive investigation and audit of pervasive allegations of abuse of the program: Initiate an immediate 180-day investigation and audit of the H-1B visa program and enact fundamental reforms of this program to ensure that it protects American workers. In recent months, more and more reports have become public of companies replacing American workers with cheaper foreign workers, contrary to the stated intent of the H-1B visa program. This will stop, and the H1-B program will be suspended until we can be certain that the program is no longer being abused.

Enforce existing federal protections for American workers: Conduct systematic audits of the companies that have taken advantage of the H-1B visa program during the last 15 years. All companies that have violated the terms of the H-1B visa program will be barred from using it for a period of years. The Attorney General will have authority to prosecute any individual found to have committed H-1B visa fraud, and offending companies will be suspended from receiving government grants and contracts.

That's the difference between Cruz and Trump: specifics and accountability under existing law. No action from Congress is needed here.

I think they should get rid of corporate sponsors entirely.

The main users of the programs have pacts behind closed doors to not offer positions to each others workers.

Since the company “owns the slot” it is used to depress wages and not allow free movement meaning, less competition to retain these employees.

Without the corporate sponsorship feature, I believe you would see these wages advance and fewer companies request these workers, who would be working at a competitive rate rather than a false “prevailing rate”.

Cruz' written plan is essentially the same with the added point that companies who have defrauded the use of H-1B visas should be barred from using the program: Suspend the issuance of all H-1B visas for 180 days to complete a comprehensive investigation and audit of pervasive allegations of abuse of the program: Initiate an immediate 180-day investigation and audit of the H-1B visa program and enact fundamental reforms of this program to ensure that it protects American workers. In recent months, more and more reports have become public of companies replacing American workers with cheaper foreign workers, contrary to the stated intent of the H-1B visa program. This will stop, and the H1-B program will be suspended until we can be certain that the program is no longer being abused.

Enforce existing federal protections for American workers: Conduct systematic audits of the companies that have taken advantage of the H-1B visa program during the last 15 years. All companies that have violated the terms of the H-1B visa program will be barred from using it for a period of years. The Attorney General will have authority to prosecute any individual found to have committed H-1B visa fraud, and offending companies will be suspended from receiving government grants and contracts.

If there ever was a textbook case or template on the way Cruz operates it is this.

The application process or "season" is 180 days, April to October. Cruz says he will suspend the program for 180 days, and you can bet it won't be during the processing 6 months of the year.

And since when can an investigation be completed in 180 days, that's usually how long it takes to agree on a font for outgoing communications.

So the program will be suspended, not for the length of an in-depth investigation, but for the six month off period of the h1b application applicable dates.

Cruz will, at the end of the 6 months, apply his tweaks, authorize the attorney general, and the program will proceed as usual.

He is going to investigate and audit this circuitous program, all in 180 days, and citizens will have to believe what he says needs tweaking or changing.

Sound familiar? Sound like way business is done in Washington all the time? If Cruz actually proposed to suspend the program for as long as it took to get at the root of the corruption and do a meaningful audit, he definitely wouldn't put a deceptive 180 day moratorium on it. He would be serious about getting to the bottom of things.

You say, "That's the difference between Cruz and Trump: specifics and accountability under existing law. No action from Congress is needed here."

You're absolutely right. Trump, upon taking Sessions on as his Security Director, has now opted into Sessions' program and stipulations. You might want to notice, too, that he didn't put Sessions' name out there to blunt the incoming. Yep, there is a big difference between Trump and Cruz.

Since Trump has been endorsed by Sessions and appointed him leader of his Security Committee, he is more and more adopting Sessions’ stances, and I think that is a good thing. Shows he can learn and take advice from the wiser ones around him.

Trump is aligned with Senator Sessions’ legislation in December.

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“Sessions introduced the bill along with Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. The legislation was inspired by cases at Southern Con Edison and Florida Disney where American workers were forced to train their foreign replacements before being fired.

If the bill passes Congress, H1-B visas would be cut from 65,000 to 50,000.

Ron Hira, an H1-B visa expert at Howard University, said the proposal by Sessions and Nelson would stop companies from taking advantage of the current program as Florida Disney and Southern Consolidated Edison did.

“More than 80 percent of H-1B visas are awarded to workers being paid less than the average wage in their field. Many of those H-1B workers have lower skills than the American counterparts they are going to replace, and the American workers often have to train their H-1B replacements,” he said. “Instead of giving visas to foreign workers with ordinary skills, this bill would allocate the visas only to the most highly skilled foreign workers – making it more difficult for employers to abuse the program.”

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/12/sessions_introduces_bill_to_cu.html