President-elect Donald Trump said he has “always been in favor” of the H-1B visa program, which imports hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, primarily from India, to fill white-collar jobs in the United States.
President Trump: “I've always liked visas, I've always been for visas.'' said of new york post of the H-1B visa program. “That's why we have them.”
“I have a lot of H-1B visas on my property. I've always believed in H-1B,” Trump continued. “I've used it many times. It's a great program.”
The remarks divided opinion between supporters of the H-1B visa program, primarily billionaires Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswami, and other tech investors, and critics on the political right and left. The announcement was made after several weeks of online discussion.
For years, Breitbart News has documented the mistreatment of American white-collar professionals as a result of the H-1B visa program. There are approximately 650,000 H-1B visas. foreign country American workers all the time. As Breitbart News highlights, Americans are often fired in the process and forced to train foreign replacements.
A study recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics found that foreign workers on H-1B visas are paid about 10 percent less than American workers in the same job.
An analysis conducted in 2018 found that 71 percent of tech workers in California's Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward region is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. It turned out that. to 99 percent A higher percentage of foreign workers on H-1B visas imported by the top eight outsourcing companies arrive from India.
In particular, President Trump has long criticized companies for abusing the H-1B visa program to suppress wages in white-collar industries by firing American professionals and replacing them with foreign workers.
In 2015, President Trump's immigration policy laid out major reforms to the H-1B visa program to prevent companies from abusing the program, Breitbart News reported at the time.
[Trump] It also called for a general wage increase for H-1B visas to encourage Americans, especially Hispanics, blacks and women, to fill positions at Silicon Valley companies rather than foreigners. Here, he said Rubio, one of two candidates along with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the Republican primary against President Trump, is expected to make a difference in the lives of American workers. They point out that they have submitted a bill that will cause serious damage. He did it on behalf of Zuckerberg and other donors. [Emphasis added]
President Trump said, “Each year, we graduate twice as many Americans with STEM degrees as those entering STEM jobs, but two-thirds of entry-level IT job openings are also achieved through the H-1B program. ” he wrote. “More than half of H-1B visas are issued at the program's lowest allowable wage level, and more than 80% are issued at the program's bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs would encourage companies to Instead of bringing in cheap labor from overseas, this would give these coveted entry-level jobs to existing unemployed workers and immigrants at home. It would improve the number of Black, Hispanic, and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been excluded in support of the program, which Mark Zuckerberg's personal senator, Marco Rubio, would decimate women and minorities. I'm proposing a bill to triple the H-1B. [Emphasis added]
In 2020, President Trump implemented such system reforms. Require federal agencies to complete audits to assess compliance with requirements, ensure that only American citizens are eligible for federal civil service jobs, eliminate the system's lottery system, and instead allow companies to If they do so, they are required to offer the highest salary. Import foreign H-1B visa workers.
The move was celebrated by longtime Trump supporters who have supported representatives of Americans who have been fired from their jobs and forced to train for foreign H-1B visas.
“Outsourcing hundreds of workers is especially harmful during a pandemic that has already cost millions of Americans their jobs,” the White House said in a statement at the time. “President Trump's actions will help combat employer abuse of the H-1B visa, which is intended to replace qualified American workers with low-cost foreign workers. It wasn't something.”
Just months before President Trump announced the reforms in July 2020, the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) laid off 200 American professionals and placed them in alternative training for foreign H-1B visas. announced an outsourcing plan.
By August, President Trump intervened; was fired TVA Chair Skip Thompson; It also demanded that TVA CEO Jeff Reich reduce his salary to less than $500,000 a year after learning that he was making $8 million when the outsourcing was announced.
Most importantly, President Trump, with the support of America's tech workers, successfully persuaded TVA to abandon its outsourcing plans, thereby saving hundreds of Americans from layoffs. be.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
