Washington, D.C. (May 25, 2023) – The H-1B visa program, the largest U.S. foreign worker program, was created to provide temporary workers for employers unable to find American or green card workers for a specialty occupation, like computers, engineering, science, and technology. Over time the program has been abused by employers who are not experiencing labor shortages and by outsourcing firms.
The result has been the displacement of Americans workers and the exploitation of H-1B workers. There are, however, reforms that can bring the visa program back in line with its original design of being temporary and limited to high-skill occupations where there are no Americans or green card holders qualified for employment.
On this week’s episode of
Parsing Immigration Policy, host of the podcast and Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies Mark Krikorian is joined by Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, and David North, a Center fellow. They discuss the historical changes of the H-1B program, the impact on wages, working conditions, and offshoring, and the fact it is rarely temporary and the workers are rarely “the best and brightest”.
In his closing commentary, Krikorian highlights the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which is the subject of an ongoing, years-long lawsuit. OPT is a feeder into the H-1B program, allowing foreign college grads to pretend they are still students, and to work for up to three years after graduation if they studied in a STEM field. This program is also subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, since the employers do not have to pay payroll taxes for Social Security, Medicare, and the federal unemployment insurance programs because the workers are still considered “students”.
