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I did my first H-1B visa interview 25 years ago as a consular officer in India, and from the start saw that something was badly wrong with this program. I just published a report on H-1Bs, and this week, I interviewed a panel of experts to discuss the visa at the Heritage Foundation.
Our consensus: the H-1B visa has badly deviated from its original intent and needs significant reform to put American workers first.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the H-1B was intended to bring workers in a “specialty occupation” to America “to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce.” But employers aren’t required to prove they can’t find qualified Americans — or even that they bothered to look.
And while there were a few obviously exceptional talents among the hundreds, if not thousands, of visa applicants I interviewed in my career, most were average college-graduate workers.
Indeed, most H-1Bs are paid below the median salaries for the jobs they do. Why would employers pay them lower wages than Americans if they were truly exceptional?
As our panelists Amanda Bartolotta, Ron Hira, Mark Krikorian and Kevin Lynne explained, there is no real shortage of talent, or STEM qualifications, in America. It is true that failures in many of our educational institutions can result in poor matches for the job market. For example, recent college graduates are unemployed at twice the national rate, while the Ford Motor Company is looking for 5,000 mechanics at $120,000 a year. But, we can address that without sidelining Americans and mass-importing foreign labor.
Today, AI looms like a wrecking ball over our job market. No one knows what jobs will remain. Given all this uncertainty, why should we put foreign job-seekers ahead of Americans?
A Chinese or Indian student goes to free or inexpensive schools in their countries compared to the U.S. They can get a BA, MA or even a PhD with little debt. Meanwhile, Americans are borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to the same level. They can’t take jobs at the same low salaries their H-1B competitors can. By allowing average-level labor to compete with our own on unfair terms, we are discouraging Americans from studying high-demand fields.
And we’re also letting American companies remain hooked on the drug of cheaper labor.
Amazon got over 10,000 approvals for H-1B visas in 2025, in the same year as they announced cuts of over 30,000 jobs. Was any effort made to retrain or re-assign Americans? Many other large U.S. companies follow the same pattern: hire abroad, fire at home.
The truth is, the number of real “specialty” workers that even big American companies really need should fit in a bus, not a stadium. And they should be willing to pay a high premium for them.
If AI firms are really willing to pay up to a hundred million dollars in signing bonuses for top talent, they will be willing to pay high salaries to get a few essential foreign workers.
Some in Washington want to increase visas for foreign workers. Some even believe that Americans should have to compete for their jobs with the whole world. I don’t.
For 30 years, Congress has tinkered at the edges of the H-1B program in a feckless attempt to protect American workers. They failed. H-1Bs are routinely used to replace American workers, and as our experts recently demonstrated, that was by design, not accident.
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Opponents of H-1B reform are circling the wagons. They are a wide and powerful coalition, crossing party lines. Their aim is to divide and conquer opposition to all the back doors by which imported labor is allowed to compete on unfair terms with American graduates and workers.
But, conservatives have a coalition too. We may have little in common with Senator Bernie Sanders, but he also wants to provide job opportunities to young people at home. With a little support from the pro-worker left, getting a major reform package through Congress to cut back mass labor importation is possible.
But we have to be realistic. To keep the tech and industrial right on board, a limited and specific channel has to remain to allow U.S. business to bring in a few, exceptional temporary workers. Strict limits, high qualifications and scrutiny all need to accompany it.
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We have to keep the American Dream alive and create opportunity for all here at home. Otherwise, socialists will make their eternal, seductive, but empty promises and lure the young into apathy, aimlessness, and resentment — not prosperity and hope.
We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make significant changes to put American graduates and workers first. The time to prioritize opportunities for Americans has come. Let’s get ‘er done.
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