Some of the specific changes Grassley and Durbin propose to the visa programs include:

That old song was right: It is a long journey to the capital city and a long, long wait, sitting in committee. (Indeed, the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2009 is currently in committee.) But unlike the optimistic Saturday morning cartoon jingle, most bills never make it past that point.

The last bill solely focused on H-1B and L-1 visas to break through was the L-1 Visa and H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004, which President George W. Bush signed into law. It raised application fees, required employees to pay H-1B workers 100 percent of the prevailing wage, and effectively increased the number of visas awarded annually by exempting from the cap an additional 20,000 H-1B petitions for foreign nationals with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions.

Among those bills that didn't survive were the USA Jobs Protection Act of 2003 from former Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.); the Bill to Abolish H-1B, introduced by former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.); the Defend the American Dream Act put forth by Rep. Bill Pascrell (R-N.J.); and Grassley and Durbin's previous attempt at H-1B visa reform, the H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007, which never made it out of committee during the last Congressional session.