Labor Day Reflection on H-1B Myths

From “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” to H-1B visas, the legacy media reporting on immigration invariable is gaslighting the public rather than news. The legacy media and politicians know that few people will actually read the bills or statutes and know what they contain. The legacy media promotes a narrative of immigration legislation that is decoupled from what is actually in the legislation.

If you prowl on X you will find people saying that H-1B is intended for highly skilled workers or that H-1B is intended to fill labor shortages. That kind of disinformation demonstrates the success of gaslighting the public.

I previously walked through the actual H-1B statutes and showed how they make it explicitly legal to replace Americans and how the statutes are designed to allow employers to pay low wages H-1B workers.

Look back on legacy media articles about H-1B, for instance, here and here. You will not find one that states the key fact that it is explicitly legal to replace Americans with H-1B workers.

When one skips the media gaslighting and actually reads the H-1B statutes, one finds that Congress designed H-1B to replace Americans with cheap foreign labor. In fact, is appears that the U.S. Congress is the only national legislature in the world that has voted to make it legal to replace its citizens with foreign workers.

Look at H-1B in action:

In 2023 there were 4,804,840 people working in computer occupations in the United States. In 2024 there were 4,786,660 people working in computer occupations in the United States.

Over that year, the United States lost 18,180 computer jobs.

In FY 2025, the United States imported 77,000 computer workers on H-1B visas alone.

H-1B clearly is not functioning to fill a shortage. It is functioning to displace Americans, exactly as Congress designed it.

One can see the effect of media gaslighting on X, where people claim that H-1B is supposed to be for worker shortages. It is quite evident there is no worker shortage in computers, yet most H-1B workers are in computers. Congress stripped out any previous shortage requirements when it created H-1B.

People also frequently state that H-1B is supposed to be for highly skilled workers. In reality, there is no skill requirement except for fashion models. A mail-order degree from a foreign diploma mill is all it takes to qualify for H-1B. Furthermore, the fact that Congress mandates H-1B visas be processed in order of petition receipt discredits any claim that H-1B is for skilled workers.

In my years in the computer industry, I worked with many H-1B programmers. They were all incompetent. (I have a follow-up post in the works on why there is an industry demand for the cheap incompetent workers that H-1B provides.)

People on X frequently state that employers must show Americans are not available before hiring. That requirement does not exist in H-1B. To the contrary, it is explicitly legal to replace Americans with H-1B workers. Congress removed any such requirements that existed when it created H-1B.

The only solution to the H-1B problem is to end the program entirely. Calling for H-1B reform is futile because reforming a program designed to replace Americans with cheap foreign workers still leaves us with a program designed to replace Americans with cheap foreign workers. So-called reforms promoted in Congress, such as raising the mythical $60,000 H-1B “minimum salary”, simply serve to give the appears of action while doing nothing.

Maybe H-1B could be replaced, but with what? How much of a need is there for temporary workers in college-educated jobs?

In 2015 I testified before that Senate Judiciary and said that it looked like the only thing that would solve the H-1B problem was executive action by Donald Trump.

Indeed, candidate Trump campaigned on ending the replacement of Americans with H-1B workers (which means ending H-1B). Trump even campaigned with Americans who had been replaced by H-1B workers. Unfortunately, no progress took place.

Donald Trump’s great political sense has been the ability to get on the right-side of 90/10 issues. Yet that sense failed him when he flipflopped in December 2024 and supported H-1B and replacing Americans with foreign workers. H-1B is the ultimate MAGA issue and Trump is on the 10 percent side of it.

Trump’s change on H-1B undermines his support for the rest of his immigration agenda. I frequently hear parents saying “What’s the point of deporting 100,000 landscapers and importing 100,000 tech workers when my kids cannot find jobs?” Americans would rather have the illegal landscapers than the legal H-1B tech workers when they realize the true relative impact of both. The unemployment rate for computer science graduates is 6.1 percent (Computer Engineering 7.5 percent) compared to 3 percent for art history majors.

The person most likely to suffer, if President Trump does not put an end to displacing Americans with H-1B workers, is J.D. Vance. If Trump-Vance cannot solve the H-1B problem by the next presidential campaign, it will open the door to other candidates, like Ron DeSantis, who say they will take the issue on.