President-elect Donald Trump claimed this week that he has not changed his mind about the controversial H-1B visa program and that the U.S. needs “smart people” coming into the country, amid a furious intra-Republican debate on the visa program.
“I didn’t change my mind. I’ve always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country, and we need competent people,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening. “We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in. We’re going to have jobs like we’ve never had before.“
The H-1B visa program allows U.S. companies to hire foreign workers for specialty occupations and is overwhelmingly used by the tech industry. However, it has long been controversial for some conservatives, who say it is abused by tech companies to bring in cheap, predominantly Indian, labor to replace American workers.
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The program hit the headlines last week when Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have been tapped by Trump to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, argued for the importance of foreign workers for tech companies.
“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,” Musk said on X.
That re-opened a rift between those on the right over the program and whether it is being used to attract the best talent or being used by companies to bring in cheaper labor, who are tied to their job by the visa.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said on Fox News Sunday that H1-B visas are being “abused.”
“I think the abuses of the H-1B program have been evident, where you have sort of the sons and daughters of those factory workers who lost their jobs, got white collar jobs as accountants, and they’re, you know, training their replacements, the foreign workers who are undercutting their wages,” he said.
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Trump has previously shown skepticism about the H-1B visa program. During his 2016 presidential campaign, he promised to tackle the abuse of the program and pointed to allegations of companies forcing Americans to train their cheaper replacements.
“The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that occurred at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements,” he said in 2016.
“I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions,” he said.
He also said that his companies use the H-1B program “and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it.”
His administration immediately began looking into reforms to the H-1B visa program, and, in 2020, it proposed a sweeping rule that would prioritize the selection of higher wage applicants for the approximately 85,000 visas allocated annually.
That rule would have required that registrations at the highest of four wage levels get to apply for the visa allocation first. Once those at the highest level have applied, then the process would turn to level III, and so on until the spaces are filled.
“Put simply, because demand for H-1B visas has exceeded the annual supply for more than a decade, DHS prefers that cap-subject H-1B visas go to beneficiaries earning the highest wages relative to their [Standard Occupational Classification] codes and area(s) of intended employment,” the rule says.
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The rule was not put into effect due to the Biden administration, which abandoned it and has since proposed a rule of its own. However, it was greeted favorably by immigration hawks. Other rules put forward during the Trump administration proposed narrowing the definition of “specialty occupation” and making changes to the way the “prevailing wage” is set in order to make sure U.S. wages are not undercut.
The incoming Trump administration has not said specifically what it will do in terms of H-1B and whether it will resurrect its first-term efforts. However, Musk proposed “raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically. “
“I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform,” he said on Saturday.
At the same time, Trump told the New York Post that the program is “great.”
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said.
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
