Chuck Grassley To Judicial Nominee: 'How Would You Fight Fraud And Abuse In The H-1B Program?'

Forbes Breaking News

5/28/2025

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) spoke about the H-1B visa program.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Woodward.

00:02I'll start with, we have five minute rounds, I'll start with Mr. Edlow.

00:07H-1B abuse has been a priority and significant concern of this committee.

00:13Senator Durbin and I have bipartisan bills that will crack down on H-1B abuse

00:18that we are working on to reintroduce very soon.

00:23Recently, many Americans took to social media to express their outrage over H-1B abuse.

00:30They even shared personal stories about being laid off by big tech,

00:35even as their employers continued to hire H-1B workers.

00:39So, how would you fight fraud and abuse in the H-1B program when you become director?

00:47Mr. Chairman, thank you for the question.

00:50In terms of fraud and abuse in the H-1B program, it is absolutely pervasive.

00:57And it's something that, in the first administration, we attempted to handle via regulation.

01:02Unfortunately, that regulation was vacated.

01:04If confirmed, I look forward to moving forward with additional regulations and sub-regulatory actions.

01:10But also, I do have to commend you and Ranking Member Durbin for introducing legislation

01:15to bring attention to this critical issue.

01:18And I want to be a partner, if confirmed, with both of you to fight this however we can.

01:25And it's more than just the H-1B system.

01:28Frankly, we need to be focused on the fraud, waste, and abuse that we have found

01:32in every non-immigrant and immigrant program that needs to be addressed at this point.

01:37We have to take care of that fraud in order to get some increase in numbers that people desire.

01:45Mr. Squires, I'm troubled about the growing industry whereby financial institutions engage

01:52in third-party litigation funding, including IP litigation funding.

01:56While you were in the private practice, you helped create Fortress Investment Group IP funding arm.

02:04I understand that Fortress Investment Group commits billions of dollars each year to fund IP litigation.

02:12Please explain the role you played in the creation of Fortress

02:17and your professional and financial involvement with that group since its creation.

02:22And have you supported or represented other IP litigation funders?

02:29Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman.

02:31In reverse order, I have not represented Fortress since about 2017, 2016, 2017 or so,

02:41and have never represented litigation funders in any capacity.

02:45I have no arrangements with them, financial or otherwise, since my representation,

02:49legal representation of them.

02:50This is certainly a question, and litigation financing is a bit of a misnomer in so far as issues

02:57in which there's been much ado about with my work.

03:00My work for Fortress at the time was before they were acquired.

03:06It was a group that came to me around 2012 regarding legal papers and theories I had developed about

03:19patents as derivatives and patents as assets per se to be valued on their own fundamentals and economics.

03:27In fact, I've been rather tough on trolls in some of my writings because troll practices are exploitive of inventors.

03:37They generally are not based upon the fundamentals and arbitrage play, whereas our patent theories with them as assets per se allow companies to monetize their patents.

03:54So they came to me with an issue wanting to solve a problem of how a company could monetize its patents without selling them,

04:00without suing, and without licensing them.

04:03We developed effectively a patent mortgage where the company could borrow against its patents as collateral and use the proceeds to fund working capital.

04:13Those were several companies who were their clients initially that staved off bankruptcy as a result of this.

04:19And I was pleased to see in 2021, one of the deans of the patent bar, Marshall Phelps, wrote an article where companies use this construct to survive COVID.

04:31Mr. Mr. Geiser, I got 35 seconds left. District court judges have been issuing unprecedented number of universal injunctions to try to block President Trump's immigration policies.

04:46I think you spoke to the separation of powers, but let me ask you anyway, in our constitutional system, who has the primary authority for protecting the borders and setting immigration policy?