US President Donald Trump’s reiterated softened stance on the H-1B visa program has continued to outrage Americans and shock the rest of the world. The MAGA leader, who was been keen on cracking down on immigration, has spoken out in favour of the ‘specialty occupations’ visa category twice within a matter of days.
The whole affair has only led those in the US who believe that the program responsible for bringing in foreign talent is simply holding local workers back from securing certain job opportunities. The POTUS’ statements have fanned the fire around the heated US work visa debate, as many are now questioning the credibility of his ‘America First’ agenda.
Trump’s new statement on H-1B visas
On Wednesday (US time), Trump again spoke out in favour of the H-1B visa category. While at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington DC, he said, “You can’t come in, open a massive computer chip factory for billions and billions of dollars like is being done in Arizona, and think you’re gonna hire people off an unemployment line to run it.”
The Republican US president doubled down on the need to bring in foreign workers to back such tech giants. “They’re gonna have to bring thousands of people with them and I’m gonna welcome those people,” he added.
Possibly the most shocking development of all emerged as Trump took a swipe at his those aligning with the far right, much like himself. “I love my conservative friends, I love MAGA, but this is MAGA.”
Ahead of these comments, the POTUS highlighted, “we want you to do that,” referring to the hiring of international workers to open massive tech-based plants in the US. He even said, “We want those people to teach our people how to make computer chips, and how to make other things.” Trump emphasised the foreigners can ultimately “go home” after a short of period when “our people are going to be doing great.”
Trump’s softened stance on H-1B reiterated
The US president’s renewed remarks on the issue come over a week after he sat down for an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. At the time, he defended the importance of skilled immigrant workers in the US, while emphasising that Americans who have been unemployed for a long term can’t be brought on to work in complex roles without the much-needed training.
Although he stood by the idea of increasing wages for American workers, the also maintained the country must still “bring this talent” to sharpen its industrial and technological edge.
Even though Ingraham argued that the US has “plenty of talented people,” Trump was quick to interject, “No, you don’t.” He went on to foreground, “There are certain skills you don’t have, and people have to learn them. You can’t take people off the unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.'”
His new admissions mirror much of what he doubled down on during the Fox News interview. Much like his statements on Wednesday about a countries investing billions on a plant in the US, he said then, “You cant’ say a country is coming in, going to invest $10 billion to build a plant, and take people off the unemployment line who haven’t worked in five years and they’re going to start making missiles. It doesn’t work that way.”
Notably, his sharp reversal on foreign workers and work visas comes after he signed a proclamation in September, which introduced a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications filed from September 21 onwards.
Reactions to Trump’s H-1B defence
Sardonic reactions like “MAGA thought Trump was going to open jobs for them” took over the comments sections of the Wednesday video.
Someone else added, “It ain’t maga if American citizen kids graduate with engineering degrees and can’t find employment because they are under bid by h1b kids from the same colleges.”
A third person wrote, “This may be true and necessary. However corporations have been using it to undermine the IT jobs market driving down salaries and making jobs harder to get for QUALIFIED Americans for decades. This has to stop.”
Another countered, “There are hundreds of thousands of unemployed highly skilled, high tech workers, with decades of experience, so yes, I am pretty sure you could take these people off the unemployment line and have them run it with minimal supervision.”
A fifth user said, “We don’t need ENTRY-LEVEL H-1Bs, then. Eliminate those at least.”