Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is using the furor over the H-1B visa program to publicly move to President-elect Donald Trump's political right on a hot-button immigration issue.
The break came after President Trump signaled support for the H-1B visa program, which is used by big investors such as Elon Musk to import college-educated immigrants seeking white-collar jobs. , DeSantis denounced the program as “terrible.”
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said DeSantis is preparing to steal the 2028 nomination from Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and is “exploiting Trump's disconnect with his own voters on this issue.” “
“This is just normal political maneuvering and wouldn't exist if the president was real.” [migration] He was a restrictionist and aligned with his constituents on this issue,” he told Breitbart News on January 10.
DeSantis lashed out at the H-1B program at a press conference on Jan. 9, putting critics of the H-1B program in the Senate seat currently held by outgoing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). I explained why I wanted to nominate him.
DeSantis said:
As a result, H-1B visas have been used to attract talent who can perform work at much lower rates than American workers. So we have a situation where companies bring in H-1Bs. [workers]American workers train their replacements and then fire American workers. How is that in the best interest of the American people?
The problem here is that when companies bring them in, H-1Bs, they work for less. They are basically indentured servants. Even if Google brings you in, you can't just show up and work at Microsoft because Microsoft pays better. Because you owe me a favor. [Google]. So I think it was a terrible program in terms of how it was done.
He continued:
We often hear that we need to bring in the best talent. If Botswana has an up-and-coming Einstein, bring him here. [but] H-1B will not be used [visa] for that. There is something called O[-1] Visa…for people with extraordinary abilities. I'm a big supporter of having limits on all immigration categories. [but] O visas have natural limits, so there are actually no legal limits. In other words, there are only a limited number of people who are really good, and you can do that through the O visa program.
And I think the H-1B has actually been used by companies to get cheaper labor. To me, the fact that they are indentured to the company is a huge problem.
And the question is, how much money are we spending on universities in this country? How much money does the federal government put into Ivy League universities? Here in the state of Florida, it's clearly spending money. [although] Our in-state tuition is the lowest in the country and we will continue to do so. Not to mention, we have a highly ranked public university system. we are proud of it. But isn't it possible to produce enough engineers? Of course you can. I think we produce them [but] They are [H-1B] people brought from abroad.
But if…the demand is not met [by universities]isn't this an indictment on the American education system that we spend this much money on? …. The same is true when looking at H-1B. This is used by accountants. Are you trying to say it's so specialized that you have to bring in foreigners and Americans can't do it?
So I think Congress should absolutely be involved in this program. I think the problems and abuse were really rampant.
Mr. DeSantis' move was praised by some Trump voters disappointed by the president's tacit support for using Indian white-collar immigrants at scale to replace American college graduates.
“This issue alone won me support for DeSantis 2028,” he said. Twitter user Numenon. “We need people who are willing to support American workers. Given J.D. Vance's previous positions, I doubt he will i) publicly but I sincerely hope that you will respectfully disagree and ii) bring your experience as a venture capitalist in the technology industry to the table.”
Like most politicians, Trump zigzags between the competing demands of his coalition. So the more protests against the H-1B program, the more likely it is to suppress investor demand for more foreign graduates.
The little-known mass turnover of US graduates was widely exposed when Elon Musk sparked a huge Twitter controversy over Christmas. Despite Trump's partial support for Musk, Recent poll results The white-collar immigration program is said to be unpopular among Republican voters, who will be needed in the 2026 midterm elections.
The H-1B program and several other visa programs provide at least 1.5 million foreign contract workers with access to professional jobs needed by both young and experienced American graduates. Masu. In 2022, Approximately 230,000 Americans More people will graduate with engineering or computer-related degrees, up from 100,000 in 2000. Almost half have not found an entry-level job, according to a 2021 government report A company full of cheap and dependent foreign workers and managers.
Foreign graduates rationally accept lower wages and inferior positions in U.S. companies, primarily because they hope to win the invaluable government-granted green card and subsequent citizenship. Because I am. Many Twitter reports from American and Indian graduates say that import managers also want to sell jobs to people from their home countries rather than let skilled Americans win jobs on their own merits.
“When I go to work in Silicon Valley, I rarely meet Americans,” said a Twitter user water soft babylon:
Literally everyone is Indian, with a little bit of Chinese. Just recently, I was in a meeting with all my product directors and above, and I was the only non-Indian guy (out of about 25 people). Randomly selected from our company directory, we have 36 senior directors of engineering who are Indian and based in the US. Two of them are American, two are Chinese, and the rest are Indian. Everyone from his boss to the CEO is Indian. This is not an outlier. This is a typical director, and you'll see the same with virtually anyone in your engineering organization. Walk into a cafeteria in San Jose at lunchtime and you'd think you'd been magically transported to Bangalore. I hardly see anyone other than Indians.
So far, most Democrats have remained silent as the investor-expert rift widens within the Trump administration. “They see this as an opportunity to score political points,” Krikorian said.
But Democrats fully support the white-collar visa worker program and the influx of southern immigrants, in part because wealthy California investors and their allies have significant influence within the party.
Indian H-1B support Program remains strong. For example, Congressman Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), an Indian immigrant, tweeted:
