Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) plan to reintroduce legislation that would require employers to make a “good faith” effort to hire U.S. citizens over H-1B visa holders, Computerworld.com reports. The two senators introduced a similar bill in March 2007, but that bill died after being folded into a comprehensive immigration reform bill that never went up for a vote.

The bill that Grassley and Durbin proposed in 2007, which they called “The H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act,” will be reintroduced with some changes, but its general outline is expected to remain the same. The 2007 bill would have required employers to advertise job openings for 30 days before submitting H-1B applications for those positions. The bill also sought to prevent employers from hiring H-1B workers and then outsourcing them to other companies.

The widespread layoffs being caused by the economic downturn may increase the chances of success for a new bill. Earlier in 2009, Grassley and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) succeeded at getting H-1B hiring restrictions on financial services firms receiving federal bailout money into the economic stimulus package.