Vice President JD Vance says the administration wants to rework how H-1B visas are administered so the program stops being used, in his view, to displace American workers with cheaper foreign labor.
Speaking on the Sept. 15 episode of the “All-In” podcast, hosted by investors Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg, Vance asked what administrative steps could ensure that a company seeking an H-1B visa is actually hiring “an actual genius, a person that is going to significantly enrich the tech ecosystem or the American economy.”
Vance said Congress lacks the “political will” to overhaul the visa program legislatively, which is why the administration has turned to executive action.
How the program works
H-1B visas are temporary, nonimmigrant visas that let foreign workers in “specialty occupations” — often called high-skilled workers — come to the United States, typically for three years, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Critics argue large companies, particularly in tech, have used the program to swap out American employees for cheaper foreign labor rather than to fill genuine skills gaps.
Vance said the administration is working to stop companies from “not just replacing one accountant who makes $60,000 with a lower-wage foreign accountant who makes $45,000 a year.”
Targeting layoffs tied to visa hiring
“We’re also looking at various ways of preventing companies that use H-1B visas from laying off a bunch of American workers,” Vance said in a clip that circulated widely on social media Sunday.
“So, one of the things that I find just shocking about this is that you’ll have a company that applies for an H-1B, and they’ll say, ‘oh, we’re desperate for workers, we can’t find the workers,’ and then you go and look at their history and they’ve laid off 5,000 people.”
In August, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new rule imposing a $103,265 fee on companies for every H-1B petition subject to the program’s annual statutory cap of 65,000 visas. A similar earlier proposal from the administration was struck down by a federal district court.
Vance called the practice of laying off American workers while seeking foreign replacements “ridiculous.”
“If you’re laying off American workers you shouldn’t be going to the market searching for foreign workers to replace them. So, we’re doing a lot, within the confines of course of what we’re allowed to do legally. We’ve gotten sued on some of this stuff. But I think fundamentally, we’re on the right on both the law and the policy.”
Vance summed up his view of what the program’s purpose should be: “The H-1B should not exist to replace American workers with low-wage foreigners. It should exist to enrich the American economy.”
