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U.S. Government Accountability Office, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
We are in the middle of a high-tech boom that is minting billionaires at a remarkable pace, and yet 8% of recent American college grads who majored in science, technology, engineering, or math — what we call STEM — are completely unemployed. That is double the national unemployment rate. Something is badly broken, and it has a name: the H-1B visa program.
H-1B visas allow American corporations to bring in foreign workers under the guise of “high skilled labor” to fill jobs that American graduates are ready, willing, and able to perform. More than 80% of new H-1B applications filed by Big Tech giants are for foreign workers filling American jobs in AI development, software engineering, and data science.
Why does Big Tech prefer H-1B workers? Because it binds those workers to the employer. An H-1B visa holder who wants to leave for a competitor typically loses the right to remain in the US. That means the employer can pay less, demand more, and face no market pressure to treat workers fairly. The problem isn’t that talent doesn’t exist right here – it’s about finding labor that can’t fight back.
Between 2022 and 2023, the top H-1B-using companies laid off 85,000 American workers while importing 34,000 foreign guest workers. Layoffs for Americans, visas for foreigners… at the same companies, in the same years.
There are currently 80,000 American medical school graduates who can’t find an essential residency position. At the same time, 10,000 foreign physicians are working in the United States on H-1B visas.
President Trump moved to address this by imposing a $100,000 surcharge on new H-1B applications, but a federal judge in Boston struck it down, backed by an almost entirely Democrat-appointed First Circuit Court of Appeals. The courts are doing what Congress and lobbyists have always done: protect the program.
Phyllis Schlafly warned about H-1B abuse back in 2003, and now there is a genuine grassroots revolt. In Iowa, a political newcomer named Zach Lahn just won a stunning gubernatorial primary upset on a platform of banning state government and universities from employing H-1B workers. His message was simple: we have hardworking American kids who deserve these jobs.
There is no talent shortage. This is a policy choice, and it’s the wrong one.
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