Republicans and Democrats have voiced opposition to the system.
Following a public debate between prominent Republicans about competent refugees, especially those with college degree, immigration authorities recently shared their perspectives on the H1-B card program.
According to the Department of Labor, the program is intended to assist employers” who may often obtain needed company skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary work of skilled individuals” from other countries.
A senior researcher at the Migration Policy Institute said Trump’s ideas were “uncertain” and will depend on plan.
Jeanne Batalova, a member of The College Fix, wrote in an email in mid-January that “how the present debate around the H-1B program may translate to real policy is ambiguous and will depend in large part on who will oversee immigration policy during Trump 2.0 general and how steady President-elect remains – in focus and direction” on this issue.
” What is certain]is ] that the discussions over the program’s size and the types of workers and employers who can benefit from it will continue”, Batalova said.
In the weeks leading up to President Donald Trump’s White House visit, the problem became more important. Vivek Ramaswamy, a failed presidential candidate, pushed for the use of H1-B visas and criticized the” culture” of American workers.
Ramaswamy, who left the Department of Government Efficiency project before it actually started, wrote on X that “our American society has venerated banality over quality for way too long ( at least since the 1990s and likely more ). ” That doesn’t began in college, it starts YOUNG”.
However, the visa drew criticism from both Steve Bannon, an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump, and Ambassador Nikki Haley, a moderate Republican and critique of Trump.
What makes the technology industry stupid is that it will always hire foreign employees for their needs, Haley wrote, appearing to be a Ramaswamy critic. ” If the technology sector needs employees, participate in our education system”.
Our unemployment rate increased from 11 % to 44 % when I was governor of South Carolina. How? No by hiring foreign workers. We contacted international businesses to make investments in SC, but no their employees. In our technical schools, we retrained South Carolinians for these new positions.
The companies started apprentice …
— Nikki Haley ( @NikkiHaley ) December 27, 2024
Elon Musk responded to a different post by saying,” The reason I’m in America is because of H1B, along with so many important people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and lots of different companies that made America strong,” along with a vulgar term.
” I have some H-1B permits on my qualities. I’ve been a disciple in H-1B. I have used it several days. It’s a fantastic program”, Trump told the New York Post.
Batalova said the H-1B immigration system “has been instrumental in bringing highly qualified immigrant workers – in high technology as well as in education, science, engineering, medical areas”. However, “it also got sucked in negative attention when some businesses hired H-1B staff as domestic staff ‘ replacements.”
The Center for Immigration Studies was contacted by The Fix for reply, but it did not respond. However, its chairman, Mark Krikorian, raised the issue of American personnel being fired in a new article opposing the card plan.
He criticized Disney for forcing American workers to train their replacements, even though H1–B visa holders are supposed to be skilled and only filling positions that a company cannot employ.
The Americans they were replacing had to instruct them on how to do their jobs because the foreign workers were so “highly skilled,” Krikorian wrote in the DC Journal.
He also wrote, H-1B visas are “intended to replace American workers and hold down their salaries. Numerous corporations have used H-1B employees, primarily from India, to replace their American employees with less expensive foreign labor.
” There is no shortage of workers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math ) — because if there were, wages in those fields would be going up, which they haven’t”, Krikorian said. ” And tech companies wouldn’t be laying off thousands of workers, either”.
Batalova, with the Migration Policy Institute, said there is” significantly higher demand for these visas, including from U. S employers wishing to hire international students who graduate from U. S. universities”. She said the program needs updating, as it has only been “revised a few times” since it was first started in 1990.
Another policy expert said” we need foreign workers”.
According to Kylie Murdock, policy advisor to Third Way,” we would still have one million open jobs if every unemployed person got a job tomorrow.”
” If Trump wants to avoid an inflationary crisis, he needs to expand the administration’s use of the H-1B visa program, without undercutting American workers”, she also said.
Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, would go further. He claimed that the United States should remove all or the majority of immigration restrictions and allow the market to choose its citizens rather than rely on governmental central planners to do so.
” The former approach is both more efficient, and provides far greater freedom and economic benefit to both immigrants ]and ] natives”, Somin, who is affiliated with the Cato Institute, also said.
A conservative think tank’s economist suggested some adjustments Trump could make to improve the system.
According to Daniel Di Martino of The Manhattan Institute, Trump should press Congress to change the law so that H-1B visas aren’t distributed randomly and instead go to those who have received the highest wages.
” This would lead to better immigrants being selected to come to the U. S., who pay more taxes, and don’t compete with middle-class workers”, Di Martino said. It would also put an end to the deceptive practices of numerous H-1B dependent businesses and low-wage offers.
Trump could use a rule that improves the H-1B dependent companies ‘ efforts to prevent fraud, according to Di Martino, di Martino added.
There are mixed opinions about whether visas lower American wages.
A recent paper, using leaked data from Big 4 accounting firms, found mixed results. Additionally, the data dates back two decades. ” We observe that the starting salaries of H-1B visa holders in audit and tax are about 10 % lower than their newly-hired peers ( matched by office, position, and time of hire ) during our sample period ( 2004–2005 ),’ the authors concluded.
” In further tests, we find no evidence of H-1B employment driving down the wages of peer U. S. citizen employees,” the authors also found.
Reforming the visa program has drawn bipartisan interest from conservative Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and liberal Senator Dick Durbin, D-IL.
They have long advocated for changes that would include greater wage transparency and better promotion of job openings.
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