Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in certain occupations, was “critical to our economy.”
Partial transcript as follows:
KARL: All right, so let’s turn to the Elon Musk versus much of the rest of – of the MAGA right. Where do you stand on this issue of visas for highly skilled foreign workers?
LAWLER: Well, look, let’s look at this as a macro issue. Number one, we all agree we need to secure the border. We’ve had a disaster under Joe Biden, 10.5 million migrants flood into the country. Billions of dollars wasted of taxpayer money in New York, for instance, on free housing, clothing, food, education and healthcare for illegal immigrants. So the current system is broken. We need to secure the border. We all agree with that. That has to be priority number one. But here’s a reality that we have to deal with. By the end of the century, we’re projected to have a population decline. Our birthrate in the last 15 years has dropped from two children per woman to 1.66 per woman. So the reality is we have a long-term population decline. We have a workforce shortage of doctors, nurses, engineers, home health aides, ad workers, construction workers, hospitality workers. We need immigration. We need an immigration system that works, that is legal, and I fundamentally believe that you need to have a system that is focused on our economic needs as a country and a more merit-based immigration system than anything else. My wife is an immigrant. I have been through this process with her. It is a fundamentally broken system.
But the H-1B visa program in which you’re talking about 65,000 visas, plus, you know, an additional 20,000 for, you know, those with master’s degrees, the fact is, you know, that is critical to our economy, and as President Trump said, it’s a program he’s used over the years for his businesses, and it’s something that has obviously been beneficial to our economy. The United States has been built on immigration, and it is vital to the —
KARL: But let me ask you — but let me just ask you, though.
LAWLER: The continued growth within our economy.
KARL: But what’s behind — I mean, there’s an all-out war on pushing back on Musk and the other tech entrepreneurs close to Trump on this issue. I mean, you’ve heard what we said at the top. I mean, Steve Bannon is calling Trump a toddler and saying this program’s a scam, and it’s about bringing indentured servants in to work for tech companies and the tech oligarchs are taking over the party.
I mean, this is an all-out, I mean, you’re expressing a view as I just heard it, very similar to what Elon Musk has said. Why does it provoke this kind of blowback from so many other of Trump’s strongest supporters?
LAWLER: Look, I don’t speak in conspiracy theories so you’ll have to ask, you know, Steve Bannon and others, but, look, the fact is this.
KARL: OK.
LAWLER: There’s no question we want an America in which Americans are employed, in which they are able to fill the needs of our workforce, which means we need to revamp our education system, our K-12 system. We need vocational schools. We need to get kids on an earlier STEM trajectory so that they are becoming the engineers of tomorrow. But the fact is, India is producing a significant number more of engineers than we are. So it’s both a function of fixing our education system and having a legal immigration system that works.
KARL: OK.
LAWLER: I agree with my colleagues who have been very forceful on the issue of the border. We need to stop the massive influx of illegal immigrants.
KARL: Right. That’s a separate issue.
LAWLER: But you cannot have no —
KARL: OK.
LAWLER: You cannot have no immigration at all. It will cripple the economy long term.
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