Are H-1B Visas Good for American Workers?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the use of H-1B visas. According to Fred Lucas at The Daily Signal, such visas are used to hire foreign workers. 

The use of H-1B visas is sometimes abused by employers. Through the use of H-1B visas, American companies hire “foreign workers for highly skilled jobs” – happens frequently – for less money than they can hire Americans with the same qualifications. Such companies discriminate against “qualified American citizens, and the Trump administration is cracking down” on them.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon said the Justice Department is focusing on H-1B visas.

H-1B visas are given to certain foreign workers so they can work in the U.S. in specialty occupations that usually require a college degree. The Department of Labor places a cap of 85,000 such visas per year, but sometimes, exemptions are made.

“Before the holiday weekend – Labor Day, after all – I thought it would be kind of cute to say [to my colleagues], ‘Hey, guys, we are enforcing our federal employment laws. That includes the Civil Rights Division law that penalizes employers for putting foreign workers over American workers,’” Dhillon said Tuesday at the National Conservatism Conference.

She said she didn’t anticipate a lot of interest but was surprised at the response.

“There were almost 100 new complaints over the weekend, which in our department is massive,” Dhillon said, noting that past Republican and Democrat administrations had ignored the problem. “People on both sides were benefiting from the cheap labor that left American workers out in the cold. We are not doing that any longer in this administration.”

“This [H-1B] program allows companies to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor, and it mostly benefits one country: India,” Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told The Daily Signal.

More than two-thirds of H-1B visa recipients, or 72.6%, are from India, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The distant-second group is at 12.5% and is from China.

Hankinson is completing a report calling for the H-1B visa program to be reduced and reformed, contending it has ballooned beyond its intended scope. He said “fraud and nepotism are rife” in the program that drives down wages in America and exploits foreign workers.

“It’s hitting college graduates,” Hankinson said. “Everybody used to tell young Americans, ‘learn to code,’” referring to an admonition to keep one’s job skills up-to-date by learning to write computer software. “They did learn to code, and they can’t get jobs.”

Employers who use H-1B visas are required to follow certain rules from the Labor Department. One rule requires employers to “post job listings in at least two major Sunday newspapers” to show that they are trying to recruit Americans first.

Supporters of the program requested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “reinstate a pilot renewal process for H-1B visa holders to allow the workers to stay longer in the United States.” The reason given was to “increase government efficiency” and “assure the flow of skilled workers for industries such as technology and health care continues to benefit American businesses.”

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk came to the U.S. on the H-1B program. However, he believes that the system needs reformation. His reason is that there is fraud in the system as shown in the following numbers: In fiscal year 2022, there were 90,143 multiple registrations with 165,180 multiple registrations in fiscal year 2023. “In fiscal year 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a fraud investigation after it found 408,891 H-1B applicants were registered more than once for the H-1B visa lottery system.”

“The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that companies were trying to cheat the vis lottery system by entering the same applicant multiple times to increase his or her chances of getting a visa.” This captured the attention of the USCIS, which issued the following statement.

Based on evidence from the FY 2023 and FY 2024 H-1B cap seasons, we have undertaken extensive fraud investigations, denied and revoked petitions accordingly, and continue to make law enforcement referrals for criminal prosecution.