On Monday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) said that he agrees with Elon Musk and President-Elect Donald Trump on H-1B visas and stated that when Republicans tried to work on work visas, “It was labor Democrats who scuttled it. It was not Republicans.”
After viewing video of Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) discussing high-skilled labor and co-host Joe Mathieu asked if work visas should be part of the debate, Fleischmann stated, “I [had] worked for work visas back when I was the ranking member, highest Republican on Homeland Security Appropriations. This is something, we’ve got a great talent pool that, sometimes, we are educating in this country and then forcing away. I think Elon Musk is right on this. More importantly, President Trump backed him up on this. We’ve got a great talent pool. Let’s face it, we are a nation of immigrants. We want it to be done legally. We want it to be done correctly. But we sure don’t want to educate a great talent pool and then send them back to China or to India or anywhere else in the world where they can glean the benefits of our great educational system. So, it is a process.”
He continued, “Interestingly enough, the pushback we originally got was not from Republicans, it was from pro-labor Democrats who actually tanked a lot of what Ms. Stevens was talking about in those hearings. So, we took it right up to the edge many times and tried to get it done. It was labor Democrats who scuttled it. It was not Republicans.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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