On Monday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “Wake Up America,” Chad Wolf, who served as acting Homeland Security Secretary during the Trump administration, said that the H-1B visa system isn’t the right system to attract the best and brightest and “It is a lottery system. It’s not based on merit. The pay is extremely low.” And is used to replace American workers.
Wolf said, “H-1B visas are for high-tech, high-skilled workers. They’re foreign workers that come into the United States. There [are] about 85,000 of them per year set by Congress. And the — but the demand far outweighs and outstrips those 85,000. You have upwards of about 800,000 applications for those 85,000 slots. And the concern here is that you’re doing, just what you indicated, which is you’re replacing American workers with foreign workers for some of these high-tech jobs in the United States. And so, that’s going to be the ongoing debate that the new Trump administration will find itself in the beginning of next year.”
He added, “[A]s someone who administered that H-1B program, it is in bad need of reform. It is a lottery system. It’s not based on merit. The pay is extremely low. And so, you have this concern by many, and I share this concern, that you’re actually just bringing in foreign labor at a much lower rate and replacing American workers. I don’t disagree that you need — we need to continue to attract the best and the brightest. The question is whether that H-1B program, as it’s currently existing, as it’s currently administered, is the right program to do that, and I don’t think it is.”
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