FAIR's Hannah Davis breaks down President Trump's H-1B controversy

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hannah Davis from the Federation for American Immigration Reform joins
US Now to talk about some policies that are in
play right now, specifically the H one B visa program.
Welcome in, Hannah, good to have you back with me.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
So this was a policy plan implementation that's been around
for a little bit now. I guess this is the
one that allows the US companies to hire foreign hired
you know, high schooled little workers by declaring that, you know,
we need more talent and should bring in additional foreign labor.
But there's some pushback on this now. It's kind of,
you know, thrown in the face of well, what about

(00:35):
America first and hiring you know americans here that could
you do these jobs? So where are we on this plan?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
And that's exactly right. The H one B visa, you know,
was developed in the in the nineties and it's for
people with exceptional merit and ability to kind of bridge the.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Gap in.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Filled with technical expertise, and the majority of them come
from India and China. And it was just in September
that the Trump administration imposed one hundred thousand dollars fee
on employers who are going to be hiring H one
B visas, but now he is totally flip flopping and
saying that we need to bring in more H one
B visa holders. And it's a scary thing, actually, because

(01:13):
as the program has grown, so is the fraud. It's
drifted substantially from its original intent, and it's now used
to displace American workers while benefiting the employer because they
can pay the H one B visa holder below the
occupation's prevailing wage. And so people on both sides of
the aisle are pretty upset at the president right now.
You know, we've got Marjorie Taylor Green, she introduced legislation

(01:35):
to phase out the H one B visa in its entirety.
And then you've got people like Bernie Sanders who have
long been against the H one B visa for basically
subsidizing foreign tech workers over American tech workers and so,
and then there's people like Elon who are naturally for
it because he came in on one. But even he
knows that, you know, it's riddled with fraud and it
needs to be fixed or gotten rid of. And it

(01:56):
doesn't seem like Trump is going in that direction anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, I'm kind of with the folks that need to
you know, are on board with cleaning it up or
phasing it out because it's gotten way out of control.
And yeah, as you mentioned, there's a ton of fraud
in getting in cheap labor because people are smarter. I mean,
that's a problem as well. And on top of that,
now President Trump's has kind of vowed to bring in

(02:19):
what six hundred thousand, more than a half a million,
you know, million Chinese students into this country. Well, hold
on just a minute, aren't we concerned? First of all, one,
China is one of our biggest adversaries. Number two, they're
already buying up land in our country around military bases,
and all of a sudden, here come the floodgates. Just

(02:41):
because they may be smart, We're going to just open
it up and bring them all in. Oh, six hundred
thousand students slash spies. I mean, what's the potential downside here?

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah? And you know, it ties in directly with the
HMB visus because Chinese students, which currently we bring in
about three hundred thousand a year, they were on an
F one visa, but once they graduate, they work here
for a few years. It serves as a stepping stone
for other work visas like the H one B and
so to tie it all in these six hundred thousand
Chinese students, what Trump is doing is basically really faulty logic.

(03:16):
He's claiming we need H one B recipients to train
Americans to do certain jobs while giving over half a
million university spots to the Chinese nationals. We don't need
Chinese students to get degrees here in the US to
train Americans. It takes away spots in schools from Americans.
And you know, these Chinese students. I hate to say it,
but I mean, we just had eight charts with espionage

(03:37):
last year for soking photos back to the CCP of
military equipment. Back in March of this year, there was
a Chinese national student who was charged with recruiting spies
and stealing tech equipment. And so it's a huge national
security concern. It's a big risk even and at the
end of the day, it does not fit the president's
America First agenda. He's thinking from a purely economic mindset

(04:00):
rather than putting the Americans first. We have smart, talented
college students who are clamoring to get into these universities
and right now they have to compete with foreign nationals
and it's just unfair.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Well, look, he changed his mind on the Epstein files
completely did at one eighty. All right, let's get him released.
Maybe he'll change his mind on this one as well.
And somebody in the White House is thinking, come here, sir,
come here, what happened to your America First plan? Come on, man,
you can't do this. I've changed my mind. I was
thinking economics, so I got ahead of myself. Never mind, Chinese,

(04:29):
you're smart, but uh were Americans just moart too. We're
gonna go ahead and let them have the scholarships. We're
gonna build America First, to get back to business policies
like I wouldn't forget it. Chinese, you're owed. So I
mean the possibility of that changing is there. I mean
the guy will change his mind and heartbeat and he
admitted here's open.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, he does. He flip plumps a lot, especially when
it has anything to do with visas. So maybe someone
will talk some sentense into him.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Who is that person in his administration, his cabinet that
has his ear to that capacity where they're not Look,
not everybody up there's you know, good to say yes, yes, yes,
or whatever you need yes, yes, yes. It's not all
yes men or women. Some who is the one person
you think could have the you know, the power, the ability,

(05:13):
the respect to go You're missing you're missing the mark
on this one, sir.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
I think Stephen Miller has a lot of respect from
the President, but from historically what I've seen is he
doesn't have a really push back. I mean, I think
this is taking a consideration the Chinese nationals and the
espionage concerns. It's something that Christy Nolan would even have
something to say. But it seems like they're all yes men.
And I hate to say it because I adore this administration,
but sometimes they just don't. They don't they don't hit

(05:38):
the nail.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well, maybe it'll be enough pushback from the American people
and our representatives in Senate and Conger, you know, the House,
to say, look, you know he's missing this one. Here's somebody,
please get his attention before this gets out of control here,
and we'll get this thing fixed. Because yeah, I'm on
board with not having this go forward much longer. All right,
Thank you so much, Hannah Davis. I appreciate you