An effort to weed out foreign workers under the H-1B visa program is getting support from President Donald Trump.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told the Hindustan Times that Trump supports his H-1B reform plan, which is designed to keep U.S. corporations from replacing Americans workers with outsourced labor.
Issa’s legislation, titled the ‘Protect and Grow American Jobs Act’ will raise the minimum salary required for foreign workers under the H-1B visa program from $60,000 to $100,000 a year.
Issa called the current minimum salary under required by the H-1B program “absurdly” low, and signaled that his legislation was supported by Trump.
“The president is supporting it,” Issa told the media.
IT firms, mostly based out of India, would be hurt by the reform, as well as U.S. corporations who directly apply to hire low-wage foreign workers.
“Indian companies are gaming the system,” Issa said.
Additionally, the legislation will eliminate a provision within the current H-1B visa program which allows for businesses to apply for waivers for those without a master’s degree.
Every year, some 85,000 foreigners apply for H-1B visas, something the Trump Administration has said they do not seek to change at least this fiscal year, as Breitbart Texas reported.
Goldman Sachs estimated that nearly a million foreigners on H-1B visas are working within the American university systems, as Breitbart News reported.
Another study, reported by Breitbart News, found that the H-1B visa program has depressed wages within the tech industry and has depreciated job availability for American workers in the computer science field.
Critics of the H-1B visa program, like Director of Government Relations Rosemary Jenks, have told Breitbart Texas in the past that reforms like the one Issa is proposing must be coupled with more legislation to curtail abuse and lower the cap on incoming labor every year.
Other critics, like Protect U.S. Workers President Sara Blackwell, have said the H-1B visa program suffers significant abuse and fraud, citing specific tech companies like IBM and Microsoft, who have used the foreign guest worker visa to find cheaper labor.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) claims the H-1B visa program remains one of the most discriminatory work programs in the U.S.
Residents living in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have “24 times the chance of being hired as an H-1B as the average resident of the world, excluding U.S. workers, who, of course, have zero chance of being hired in this program,” as expert David North found.
John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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