Trump Rewrites H-1B Program to Help American White-Collar Workers

President Donald Trump’s deputies have launched a fundamental reform of the H-1B visa system to protect American graduates from outsourcing — despite furious opposition from donors and leaders from Silicon Valley, Fortune 500 companies, and coastal investors.

The reform will end the annual award of 85,000 H-1B visas by lottery, which has been gamed by companies to import foreign workers at wages far below the salaries needed by American professionals.

“The current use of random selection to allocate H-1B visas … hurts American workers by bringing in relatively lower-paid foreign labor at the expense of the American workforce.”.

Tech Workers, which opposes the H-1B and other visa worker programs.

On August 3, for the Tennessee Valley Authority, he used the authority he had to protect those white-collar jobs [from H-1B outsourcing].

For example, Monmouth University’s early October poll showed Trump getting 38 percent among white college graduates, while Biden had 57 percent.

On October 13, Monmouth showed Trump was getting 48 percent of white college graduates in North Carolina, up from 42 percent on September 3.

Both states have been hit hard by H-1B outsourcing, giving Trump a chance to champion the very popular economic self-interest of college graduates.

They’re laying off American workers left and right because there is so much cheap [foreign] labor in North Carolina … They’re hiring anybody through third-party consulting companies, and they are paying them on 1099s [as gig workers]  to work at the financial institutions.

They’re replacing American workers such as risk managers and actuaries — any jobs they can fill with cheap labor.

media focuses on blue-collars in swing-state Penn., but Trump set himself up to win many white-collars who fear losing their careers to Fortune 500 outsourcing of jobs to India's myriad visa workers.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that H-1B visa workers hold almost 600,000 white-collar jobs.

But other estimates say 900,000 jobs are allocated to H-1B workers.

In addition, at least another 600,000 foreign workers hold white-collar jobs after being imported via other pipelines, dubbed Optional Practical Training (OPT), L-1, J-1, TN, Curricular Practical Training (CPT), and H4EAD.

Some of these million-plus foreign workers stay in the United States until they are trained by Americans and can take the white-collar jobs back to India.

But most of these foreign workers come from low-tier universities and work for many years at low wages in mid-skill jobs in the hope or expectation of getting green cards and citizenship delivered via a current or future employer.

Many more visa workers work as gig workers for little-known subcontractors in the hopes of getting into the H-1B program so they can get citizenship.

This green card outsourcing prevents many American graduates from getting paid jobs where they can use the degrees they earned with borrowed tuition money. Also, outsourcing pushes many experienced American professionals from mid-career jobs, while millions more face lower salaries and persistent job insecurity.

Biden’s 2020 platform promises to let companies import more visa workers, let mayors import a new class of visa workers, and allow an unlimited flow of foreign graduates through U.S.