The eclectic coalition of competing interests that has the ear of President-elect Donald Trump has exposed a yawning but important rift over whether or not legal immigration should be restricted as much as illegal immigration will be.
Trump has made deporting illegal immigrants a key part of his agenda, as he and his administration prepare to take office in less than a month. But his imminent return to office has also raised the question about what policies he should pursue to expand or restrict legal immigration.
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The so-called Tech Bros, whose champions include Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and David Sacks (each of whom has been tapped for key advisory roles in the incoming administration), are among those pushing for more legal immigration. Musk and Sacks, whose companies rely on many foreign-born workers, wish to see a more streamlined and expansive approach to granting H-1B visas to highly skilled foreigners.
But if Trump wants to achieve his goals of lowering the cost of living, and ensuring that Americans have stable and good-paying jobs, expanding the H-1B visa program and other legal immigration pathways is not the way to do it.
To begin with, H1-B visas have been grossly abused by companies eager to hire foreigners over American citizens. These visas are given out on a lottery basis every year to a maximum of 85,000 foreigners, out of hundreds of thousands of applicants. But in an attempt to game the odds, companies often submit multiple (and thus fraudulent) applications for the same individual to boost their chances of being selected.
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The abuse of the program is even worse after a visa has been granted. Companies that secure new foreign born employees in many cases are not hiring this individual for an open position, rather, the company will turn around and fire an American born employee. A report from Bloomberg earlier this month detailed how Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. used the H1-B visa program to replace a number of American-born employees with Indian immigrants and only given the option to remain employed by the company if relocated. To add insult to injury, these American-born workers were forced to train their foreign-born replacements.
Cognizant is currently litigating its hiring practices in court, but its modus operandi is hardly new. In 2019, Axios reported that telecommunications giant AT&T had forced thousands of native employees who were being laid off to train their foreign-born replacements.
But beyond the issues of fraud and abuse, expanding the H1-B visa program will be an obstacle to domestic prosperity. Every year, the United States admits 85,000 foreign workers under the visa program. Each one of those 85,000 new residents will require a housing unit, food, fuel, and all the other necessities of life. That means 85,000 new customers competing with the existing population for a finite amount of resources. And over a span of five years, that’s nearly half a million people. Simple supply and demand economics would dictate that prices for goods would rise.
The rising costs of goods and services are only one negative impact that importing a foreign workforce to compete with the native population creates. Currently, 10% of men ages 25-54 have left the workforce, equating to roughly 7 million would-be working-aged men. Replacing these able-bodied people with foreign workers who are viewed as no more than cogs in a market machine further exacerbates deep-seated cultural issues towards work and life while placing native-born workers at a competitive disadvantage.
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The duty of the U.S. government is to its own citizens. That is the essence of the America First ideals that created the Make America Great Again movement and delivered Trump to the White House for a second time.
If the Trump administration is to be successful in its promise of a new American golden age, it must resist the notion that the nation cannot succeed economically without importing a foreign workforce through legal means. It cannot view economic growth as an end unto itself that justifies inflating a competitive job market at the expense of American citizens. The administration must remember that its duty is to ensure that every American, regardless of where they live, has the opportunity to work hard and hold a job, own a house, raise a family, and retire with dignity.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
