The Trump administration is preparing significant changes to the H-1B visa program according to Joseph Edlow, newly confirmed director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-1B visas are a type of nonimmigrant visa that allow American employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty occupations, typically in technology, engineering, finance, and academia.
In an interview with The New York Times, Edlow said the administration wants to prioritize higher-paying employers in the H-1B visa process, aiming to address concerns from immigration hard-liners that foreign workers undercut American wages. Edlow emphasized the visa system should “supplement, not supplant” the American workforce.
Former Biden officials are defending the program and criticizing Trump’s efforts to protect American workers. Doug Rand, a former Biden aide, said the program “is the main way that US companies can hire the best and brightest.”
Critics of the program, including Vice President JD Vance, have accused companies of replacing laid-off U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor. However, tech industry leaders, often Trump allies, argue the program is essential due to a shortage of qualified American workers. While speaking at an AI conference in Washington, D.C. recently, Vance specifically called out Microsoft for requesting more than 9,000 H-1B visas this year while laying off nearly 16,000 workers. (RELATED: Immigration Crisis Strains Small Wisconsin City of Whitewater Wisconsin)
The politics of the H-1B visa program can make for strange bedfellows. While MAGA sympathetic businessmen and leaders like Elon Musk and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy lauded the program late last year, Vance’s criticisms echoed complaints from socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a rare agreement.
In January, Sanders wrote an op-ed for Fox News blasting H-1B visas, saying trade deals like NAFTA, which shifted manufacturing overseas and promised to bring more higher skilled employment opportunities for Americans to replace it, never lived up to their promises.
Sanders argued the program’s ultimate goal was not to attract top talent from across the globe, “but instead to replace American workers with lower-paid workers from abroad.”
Sanders used examples of H-1B visas being used to hire English teachers and cooks, suggesting it is disingenuous to think it was difficult to find Americans who could be hired as English teachers. (RELATED: Milwaukee Educator Self-Deports Amid Trump-Era Immigration Pressure)
Sanders’ Republican colleague from Missouri, Sen. Eric Schmitt, made similar comments, telling Fox News that American workers shouldn’t be “training their replacements.”
Critics of the program may have a point according to a model study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research. In research on the impact of foreign-born computer scientist H-1B visa holders on the United States economy, while there were benefits to Americans writ-large in the form of lower cost of goods, “wages, domestic employment, and, as a result, college enrollment in computer science” were depressed in the model.
On the flip side, the American Immigration Council lauds the program, saying the economic benefits of H-1B visas “are felt in communities across the United States,” saying major metro areas like New York, San Francisco, and Dallas were home to the largest number of visa petitioners.
Most recently, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis set his sights on the program, calling it a “scam” and “indentured servitude.” DeSantis echoed Sanders and Schmitt, saying companies are “laying off all these American workers and then they’re importing H-1B visa people to work for cheaper.”
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