Why all these unnecessary foreign worker programs?

August 6, 2025 Update

U.S.-born Americans continue to account for all of the job gains since January, while the number of foreign-born workers has declined, probably due to increased immigration enforcement.

There remains a lot of slack in the labor market. There is no need for the continued high levels of permanent or temporary foreign workers.

• More than 1.8 million people have been unemployed for at least 27 weeks,
• the highest level since before the pandemic.

We’ve discussed the tough job market for college graduates. Meanwhile, a record 1.5 million foreign students are enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, including 380,000 who have received work authorization through some form of practical training program.

The H-1B visa displaces qualified Americans

U.S. Tech Workers breaks down how it works:

• Fill a U.S. Job with an H-1B worker (who can be hired even if Americans are available)
• Sponsor H-1B worker for a green card (during which the worker cannot change jobs without losing the sponsorship)
• Get around the green card requirement that no U.S. worker be passed over by placing job ads in places where Americans won’t find them.

See our fact sheet for more.

July 31, 2025 Update

Millions of Americans would benefit from LOWER immigration.

• 6 million Americans wanted a job last month but weren’t counted in the labor force
• Software development job postings were down 40% from pre-COVID levels
• Young Americans (under 24) saw the biggest drop in work
  • 58% of students who graduated within the last year are still looking for their first job
  • 20% of white-collar job-seekers have been searching for work for at least 10 to 12 months
  • 40% of unemployed people said they didn’t land a single job interview in 2024.
  • 4.3 million young people are now NEETs: not in education, employment, or training.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

“With each new class after 2020, an ever-smaller share of graduates is landing jobs that require a bachelor’s degree, according to a Burning Glass Institute analysis of labor data. That’s happening across majors, from visual arts to engineering and mathematics. And unemployment among recent college graduates is now rising faster than for young adults with just high-school or associate degrees.

“Meanwhile, the sectors where graduate hiring has slowed the most–like information, finance, insurance and technical services–are still growing, a sign employers are becoming more efficient and see no immediate downside to hiring fewer inexperienced workers, said Matt Sigelman, Burning Glass’s president.”

Mass immigration – legal or illegal – makes it harder to bring Americans back into the economic mainstream. There is no job Americans won’t do.

OUT with the OPT

While the next generation of American talent gets passed over, the Optional Practical Training program (OPT) gives employers a discount for hiring foreign workers.

Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ-09) introduced a NumbersUSA Great Solutions bill to end the OPT program. As of this posting, 11 representatives have cosponsored the bill.

Mass immigration – legal or illegal – makes it harder to bring Americans back into the economic mainstream. There is no job Americans won’t do.

15 Reps have an A+ for supporting reductions in foreign worker visas

Every other Member of Congress has either an F-Minus or an Incomplete in the foreign worker category. See your Members’ grades here. See all grades here.

July 10, 2025 Update

All of the net job gains since January have gone to American-born workers. Two million more U.S.-born Americans are working, while the number of foreign-born workers declined by more than 500,000. Americans are “doing the jobs” and then some. Yet the case for fewer foreign worker programs grows stronger.

“It’s difficult to find a new job right now,” reports Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “Young people are struggling to land their first jobs and anyone who has been laid off is having a hard time. The labor market is frozen outside of healthcare, education and law enforcement jobs.”

Yes, job opportunities are scarce even for STEM grads.

Nearly two million people have been continuously trying to get back to work and failing to find the opportunity. This is no labor shortage.

Tech companies have cut 75,000 jobs since January, a 35% increase over last year, but they continue to apply for guest workers. This is the same industry that cut 170,000 jobs from 2022-2023 while registering for 780,000 guest workers.

Microsoft alone plans to fill 14,000 jobs with foreign workers this year while eliminating 9,000 positions.

I assume most foreign guest workers are wonderful people. I know this is often true. Some have truly remarkable skills. But most are good, average workers that we simply do not need.

July 2nd Update

The number of prime-working-age American men who aren’t working remains at or near record highs. Nearly 30 percent of non-college workers do not have jobs.  Young graduates are facing an employment crisis. High-school graduates ages 18 to 19 with no college averaged an unemployment rate of 14.5% over the past 12 months. Tech layoffs are surging, but H-1B requests are still chugging along.

June 26, 2025 Update

White collar jobs on the decline

NumbersUSA has historically emphasized the need for immigration policy to – at minimum – due no harm to America’s most vulnerable workers. To make the case for immigration reduction, however, one need only look at the situation for white collar workers, who have seen opportunities in the public sector decline for years now.

Two out of five employers told the World Economic Forum that they plan on cutting their workforce. These companies include some of America’s largest employers: Amazon, Google, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Estee Lauder, and Hewlett Packard. In light of these trends, what is the case for issuing over a million green cards every year to permanent foreign workers, and another roughly one million work permits to temporary foreign workers?

“It’s the worst job market for recent college graduates since the peak of the COVID pandemic and before that, since the Great Recession,” writes Ryan James Girdusky in his National Populist Newsletter. And yet the foreign-worker train keeps chugging along. Foreign-student enrollment and OPT workers are increasing, and the U.S. will grant another 100,000+ H-1B visas this year.

See: 2024 Top 200 Employers for OPT and STEM-OPT Students

“Too many grads, not enough jobs.”

Published June 15, 2025

I ripped these phrases from the news this month about the grim prospects ahead for American graduates in computer science and engineering (6.1 and 7.5 percent unemployment, respectively!). Wages are stagnant; there aren’t enough opportunities; and federal guest worker programs like OPT and H-1B are not only unnecessary, but are contributing to the problem.

Immigration maximalists sell guest worker programs as solutions to temporary labor shortages, but the reality is something else completely. These programs bypass domestic workers and exploit foreigners who work for less. As the headlines this week make clear, there is no shortage of American STEM talent. So why is our government filling hundreds of thousands of jobs with guest workers?