President-elect Donald Trump has announced his position on the H-1B visa, which imports hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, mainly from India, to work specialty occupations.
This from townhall.com.
His statements starkly contrast his first term, where he emphasized the need to prioritize American workers and “America First” policies. His first administration implemented several measures, including stricter eligibility criteria, increased scrutiny of applications, and reduced visa approvals, to ensure American workers were not displaced or underpaid.
Trump said he has many H-1B visas employed on his properties and believes in the “great” program.
He told the New York Post:
I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.
Trump, who was previously critical of foreign worker visas during his first administration, agreed with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who argued that the program is crucial for enabling American companies to access highly skilled labor that may be scarce within the U.S. workforce and should be expanded to meet growing demands.
However, critics say the program prioritizes H-1B holders over U.S. citizens for American jobs.
Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller has been a big advocate for restrictive immigration, as well as restrictions on H-1B visas.
According to The Times of India:
Miller had influence on a bill that would have imposed major restrictions on the visas such as requiring applicants to work abroad for at least 10 years, and for them to receive a high minimum salary of over $100,000 a year when granted such visas.
Contrarily, Musk has doubled down on his support for the program, having slammed a social media user who criticized the billionaire’s stance on the H-1B visa.
Musk wrote on X:
The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.
Ramaswamy echoed Musk’s sentiments:
American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence.
He argued in a post to X that he hopes:
American culture again prioritizes hard work over laziness.
Further, he posted on X:
[T]he H-1B visa program is badly broken & should be replaced with one that focuses on selecting the very best of the best (not a lottery), pro-competitive (no indentured service to one company), and de-bureaucratized.
Republicans who criticized H-1B visas included far-right activists Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley also weighed in, calling it “lazy” for the “tech industry to automatically go to foreign workers for their needs.”
In a post to X on Friday Haley said:
Invest in our American workforce.
We must invest in Americans first before looking elsewhere.
Musk also faced accusations of censoring critics after more than a dozen conservatives, including Loomer, said their blue badge verification on X had been revoked after they criticized Musk over his views on immigration.
Breitbart News reported:
[I]n 2015, Trump laid out key visa program reforms, such as increasing the wage for issuing visas to attract Americans to corporate positions rather than foreigners.
According to reports:
[T]here are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in America at any time. U.S. citizens are often laid off and forced to train their foreign replacements.
NOTE: The H-2B visa program allows employers to import unskilled workers from abroad for temporary jobs if no qualified U.S. workers want the jobs.
