Trump on H-1B visa: US doesn't have enough talent, needs foreign workers

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday admitted that the United States does not have enough skilled talent to meet its labour needs, even as his administration makes it harder for companies to hire workers from abroad.

In an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday, Trump was pressed by host Laura Ingraham about H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers and whether his administration would make them less of a priority. Ingraham argued that visas would make it harder for Trump to achieve his goal of raising wages for US workers.

“You also do have to bring in talent,” Trump countered.

When Ingraham said the US already had “plenty of talented people here,” Trump responded “no.”

“You don’t have certain talents. And you have to, people have to learn. You can’t take people off, like an unemployment line, and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory. We’re going to make missiles,’” he said.

Why Trump is defending foreign skilled workers

Trump’s comments arguing that some level of skilled workers are needed come after the administration earlier this year slapped a $100,000 application fee on the H-1B visa, which is widely used by some of the country’s largest companies, especially tech industry giants, to bring in workers from other countries.

That policy change drew a lawsuit from the US Chamber of Commerce, highlighting the clash between corporate America and Trump’s immigration crackdown. Trump in his second term has ramped up deportations of undocumented migrants, including through the deployment of troops to major cities to assist immigration officers, spurring worries about the impact on the labour supply for businesses.

What Trump’s allies are saying on H-1B visas

However, his allies may not agree with him in this. Recently, the US Department of Labor accused businesses of exploiting the H-1B visa programme by replacing young Americans with foreign workers, pointing directly to India as the biggest beneficiary of the system.

“Young Americans have had the American Dream stolen from them, as jobs have been replaced by foreign workers due to rampant abuse of the H-1B visa,” the department said in a post accompanying its new campaign video on social media.

“For generations, we’ve told Americans that if they work hard enough, they can achieve the American Dream. But many young Americans have had this dream stolen from them,” the video’s narrator says, as text on screen hails President Donald Trump and Labour Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer for “putting America first.”

What US governors are saying about the visa programme

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has also criticised the H-1B visa programme, calling it a “total scam” during a Fox News interview. “Most of them are from one country, India,” he said. “There’s a cottage industry about how all those people make money off this system.”

He added that American workers are often made to train their replacements before being dismissed.