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For the first time in history, a sitting Vice President has acknowledged what millions of Americans have come to know: the H-1B visa program displaces Americans and exploits guest workers.
That happened this week when J.D. Vance led a press conference to announce that several companies, including Microsoft and Adobe, were suspended from PERM, the green card process that keeps H-1B workers captive. Six outsourcing firms were also penalized.
Vance’s announcement came on the heels of the Department of Homeland Security proposing a $70,000 fee per student to use Optional Practical Training (OPT), plus $30,000 for each additional OPT period. OPT gives employers a discount for not hiring Americans.
Quotes of the Week:
“You cannot lay off American workers, and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.” – Vice President Vance
“The national interest in protecting American workers and program integrity far outweighs any reliance interests of foreign students, employers … or educational institutions.” – The Department of Homeland Security, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
A Historic First
The displacement and exploitation inherent in the H-1B and OPT programs are not news. Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes reported that Americans were training their foreign replacements back in 1993. Alec MacGillis investigated fake job ads for ProPublica last year. In between, countless news stories and exposes have been published. NumbersUSA’s own videos explaining H-1B and OPT have been viewed over 15 million times.
What’s new is the Vice President of the United States acknowledging what you already know, and a White House that is taking action.
Validation, At Last
I know many of you have suffered personally due to these and other programs. You have borne witness to the insults added to your injuries. You have been frustrated at every turn and we have been frustrated with you. We had breakthroughs along the way: a 2007 video catching a lawyer explaining how not to find American workers; a 2015 feature in the New York Times – but still, multiple Congresses and administrations failed to stand up for American workers. Presidents repeated the falsehood that there were no interested and qualified Americans for these jobs.
That changed this week with Vance rejecting what he deemed the “pernicious” idea that “Americans are not good enough for jobs in their own country.”
When aligned against a wealthy coalition that benefits from cheap labor, a movement needs time to reach the uppermost levels of government. I hope you will share our sense of hope and excitement this week. I’m especially thinking of those of you who worked closely with me years ago to share your stories with the media. And I’m thinking of our friends who fought on our side who are no longer with us.
The decades of work we have put in together to educate the public are simmering now, and bubbling up to the highest levels of government. This week, we were heard.
Now, About Our Congress…
Vice President Vance’s task force alone won’t end the financial incentives to displace Americans with cheaper, captive foreign workers. That takes reforms that only Congress can pass. Vance himself said there is “a lot more we could do if Congress was willing to play ball” and extended an invitation to Democrats and Republicans to work with the administration.
Let’s take a break from talking about the border Congress has failed to permanently secure to look at the middle-class jobs Congress has failed to prioritize for American workers.
This Congress’s record on managing guest worker programs in the American interest is pathetic. If you look at the “Foreign Worker Visas” category on our grade cards, you’ll find:
- 57 Members of Congress have earned an A
- 207 have earned an F
- 269 have done nothing
The H-1B and OPT programs are just two of an alphabet soup of guest worker programs that incentivize employers to bypass the domestic labor market. Their harmful effects are well documented and now expressed from the White House’s bully pulpit. What is this Congress prepared to do?
Lasting reform requires limiting these programs to genuine shortages and requiring wages high enough that no employer would choose a guest worker just to save money. Those reforms would treat guest workers more fairly, too. This Congress is running out of time to move Rep. Eli Crane’s End H-1B Visa Abuse Act (H.R. 8443) and Sen. Tom Cotton’s Visa Cap Enforcement Act (S. 2941).
It’s time for the “People’s House” to represent the people. It’s time for the “world’s greatest deliberative body” to debate. We want to hear those 57 A’s make their case for investing in the American workforce, force the 207 F’s to defend indentured servitude, and make the other 269 Representatives and Senators pick a side.
The OPT Fee Proposal Is A Work Of Art
The proposed rule demonstrates that there is an abundance of American workers available for the jobs filled by OPT:
The proposed rule exposes the OPT program as “a means to circumvent the H-1B visa program” and reveals its most “pernicious” part, if you will: discounts for not hiring Americans:
….
DHS concludes: “The large-scale replacement of American workers through systemic abuse of the OPT program undermines the U.S. economy.”
The proposed rule describes an overwhelmed system that issued nearly 200,000 work permits for foreign students in 2024 alone.
The point of the fees is to reduce the size of the program:
The fees are based on the costs of an equivalent education and comparable to the fee for an H-1B visa. And the proposed rule builds in a transition period for employers already using OPT. But DHS has some blunt advice for employers seeking the OPT-discounted workers:
“….To the extent employers staffing levels may be impacted by this proposed fee, they can minimize this impact by recruiting U.S. citizens or candidates with other lawful work authorization to fill the vacancies….”
And finally: DHS believes the entire program may need to be shut down:
NumbersUSA In The News
Newsweek sought out NumbersUSA’s comment on Vance’s H-1B press conference. I praised the Vice President for making an example of an American company. As the late H-1B watchdog Norm Matloff frequently complained, criticisms of the H-1B program inside the Beltway are often aimed at foreign offshoring companies while ignoring the displacement inside America’s own tech giants.
The Porterville Recorder (Tulare County, Calif.) quoted NumbersUSA’s Scientific Director Leon Kolankiewicz and Sustainability Advisory Chair Philip Cafaro on our new study they co-authored about rapidly changing California. The Western Journal also ran a story: “Mass Migration Devastated California’s Natural Resources Over Decades.”
In Other News
In-State Tuition: The Justice Department is suing the University of Delaware for not offering U.S. citizens the same reduced tuition as illegal aliens. Related: The Americans First Immigration Act (H.R. 8586) prohibits states from charging illegal aliens lower tuition rates at public colleges and universities than U.S. citizens from out of state pay.
Visa Lottery: On Oct. 1, the visa lottery’s new year began with no winners. The State Department never opened registration, so no drawing was held and no one was chosen. The pause may not last.
Overstays: A DHS Inspector General report issued a damning review of the Biden Administration’s lackadaisical approach to visa overstays.
This Week In Immigration History
Oct. 9, 1986. The House passes The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)
The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) paired a sweeping amnesty with employer sanctions meant to turn off the magnet of illegal employment. The enforcement collapsed almost immediately. Over the years that followed, only a tiny handful of employers nationwide were ever fined, an estimated seven to eight million illegal aliens continued to hold jobs, and the illegal population quintupled.
Congress has never required all U.S. employers to verify the work authorization of their new hires.
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