WarRoom host Stephen K. Bannon is dominating the debate on H-1B visas on X (formerly Twitter), with a poll revealing users support his opposition to the visa program over the platform’s owner, Elon Musk. The tech billionaire had said the United States should double the number of foreign workers. However, a poll initiated by former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, with close to 100,000 votes, saw Bannon capturing a whopping majority of 67.4 percent of voters.
Bannon and Musk have been divided on the issue of H-1B visas. Musk has advocated for more supposedly skilled immigrants to be allowed into the United States, while critics of the program, including Bannon, argue that the program favors foreigners at the expense of American workers.
Over the weekend, Bannon launched an attack on the H-1B program, saying, “Let me repeat: the H-1B visa program is a total and complete scam, concocted by Wall Street’s lords of easy money and Silicon Valley oligarchs to boost profits.”
Lets settle this
H1B Visas:
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) December 29, 2024
BIG TECH.
Reports reveal that Musk’s automotive company, Tesla, has filed over 3,200 H-1B visa applications this year. H-1B workers can work for much lower wages than Americans, maximizing corporate profits.
However, Tesla is just one of several large American companies taking advantage of the H-1B system, which is dominated by Big Tech firms including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others. Just 30 companies made up over 25 percent of all the H-1B petitions approved in 2019 alone.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) FY 2023 report to Congress states that 386,318 H-1B visas were filed last year. A third were new, which indicates that the supposed cap of 85,000 was exceeded that year.
The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam has outlined why H-1B visas should be ended, as the visa program purports to pay large wages to workers but often pays a legal minimum that is actually well below rates expected by Americans.
