Trump reignites H-1B debate

President Trump reignited debate over the H-1B program last week after Fox News’ Laura Ingraham pressed him on how hundreds of thousands of H-1B workers depress American wages.

“I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent,” he replied. “You don’t have certain talents and people have to learn.”

The exchange made international news. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent quickly clarified that the president was talking about a limited program to train Americans in niche fields. Still, the moment put the spotlight back on a visa program the Trump Administration itself has been critical of.

In his September 19, 2025 proclamation, President Trump wrote:

“The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”

Earlier this summer, Vice President Vance expressed support for a limited version of the program, but criticized how is has been widely used.

“You see some big tech companies where they’ll lay off 9,000 workers, and then they’ll apply for a bunch of overseas visas,” Vance explained.

“And what the president has said, he said very clearly: We want the very best and the brightest to make America their home. We want them to build great companies and so forth. But I don’t want companies to fire 9,000 American workers and then to go and say, ‘We can’t find workers here in America.’ That’s a bullshit story.”

A teachable moment

The president’s exchange with Ingraham thrust the H-1B visa program back into the spotlight, with pundits on the left and right debating the merits of the program. Congress created the H-1B visa in the Immigration Act of 1990 with the idea that some temporary visas would be necessary to fill jobs in emerging technology industries until the American education system could catch up. Over 30 years later, the judgment is in.

H-1B visas are not a bridge over labor gaps.
They’re a shovel that buries American workers.

As H-1B watchdogs Ronil Hira and Norman Matloff have long noted: yes, some H-1B workers are talented – even brilliant. But the program on the whole displaces Americans at scale and exploits foreign workers whose skills are no better than their American counterparts.

Our video here explains how it works.

Problems with H-1B include:

• According to the Department of Labor: “H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker.”
• Employers must demonstrate that they have tried to find qualified and interested domestic workers only after they sponsor their already-hired H-1B worker for a green card.
• Employers commonly “demonstrate” that there are no domestic workers by placing job ads designed to get no responses.
• The majority of H-1B workers are paid “entry level” wages. They are either not the best and the brightest, or they are woefully underpaid.