What Can the Administration Do about H-1B Abuse?

The Trump administration has made a number of moves recently to try to curb widespread abuses in the “skilled” foreign-worker pipeline, including the H-1B and OPT programs.

The Center for Immigration Studies is publishing several reports and a podcast on this subject by Senior Legal Fellow George Fishman, a 30-year veteran of immigration policymaking on Capitol Hill and the executive branch.

Fishman outlines the abuses – such as replacing U.S. workers with H-1Bs, or allowing foreign “students” who are no longer students to stay and work – as well as the statutory background and the changes proposed by the administration.

The broad finding of these analyses, which Fishman discusses with Parsing Immigration Policy host Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center, is that many of the abuses in the white-collar foreign-worker pipeline are legal – because past Congresses chose to make them legal. Replacing American workers with H-1Bs, for instance, is a feature of the program as enacted by Congress, not a bug.

Fishman concludes that, while some of the administration’s moves to rein in these abuses may succeed, ultimately only Congress can truly fix the problems in the law.

Host

Mark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Guest

George Fishman is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Links

President Trump and Vice President Vance Tell H-1B Employers To Stop Laying Off Americans Workers: Can they make it stick?

Vice President Vance Condemns Microsoft’s H-1B Visa Abuses: But can the Trump administration ‘cut off the head of the snake’?

Will a $100,000 Fee Pave the Way to the End of Optional Practical Training?

Intro Montage

Voices in the opening montage:

• Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.
• Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.
• President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.
• Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.
• Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.
• Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.
• Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.
• Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.
• Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.
• Candidate Trump in 2015 campaign speech.
• Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".