H-1B visas are being "abused" in the United States, with many American workers being forced to "train their replacements," and many are "undercutting their wages" due to it, Sen. Eric Schmitt told Fox News Sunday.
The Missouri Republican, speaking about the debate over the program that has roiled the GOP this past week, said that "I think there's an important, thoughtful debate that's happening. But the context that we need to, I think, keep in mind here is that American workers have been left behind by this economy. Many factory jobs have been sent overseas."
Schmitt added that "I think the abuses of the H-1B program have been evident, where you have sort of the sons and daughters of those factory workers who lost their jobs, got white collar jobs as accountants, and they're, you know, training their replacements, the foreign workers who are undercutting their wages."
The senator emphasized that "the first order business, I think, for the Trump administration is the deportations that are going to begin on day one, the executive orders that are coming. I do think President [-elect Donald] Trump has talked about reforming this system, the H-1B system. But the broader issue here is mass migration that has undercut jobs, wages, and in increased housing costs."
Schmitt added that Trump actually "articulated a solution in 2020 to reform that system and get rid of the abuses, make it merit-based and make sure that we're not undercutting wages and having Americans train their foreign replacements."
The senator specified that "the abuse that's happened with this where you see qualified Americans being denied a lot of these jobs because a company can go and hire cheaper labor from a foreign country, right? That is really the abuse. IT companies [are] sometimes putting 30,000 applications and hoping to get 10,000 from a random lottery. That is a system I think needs to be reformed."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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