On Monday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “On Balance,” former acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf responded to President Donald Trump’s defense of the H-1B visa program by saying, “that is not the current H-1B system. They come over, they stay here, and they continue to take those American jobs. So, look, you can do what the President says. It’s going to take some reform, right? It’s going to take, perhaps, a new visa program to do exactly what he’s articulating.”
Wolf said, “Congress envisioned — perhaps envisioned a program that allowed really, really technical high-skilled individuals to come over here to start businesses, to contribute to the economy, to do a number of things. That’s simply just not what the program — how it is currently designed and how it is being executed today. We’re not bringing in the high-skilled folks that many people talk about. Instead, it is that low-skilled number of individuals coming in, and those are displacing American workers. So, the system’s broken and it needs to be fundamentally fixed.”
After viewing part of the President’s exchange with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on H-1B visas, Wolf stated that “what the President was talking about there is, again, bringing in really high-skilled individuals to come in, perhaps start that business…but to then train American workers and leave. Unfortunately, that is not the current H-1B system. They come over, they stay here, and they continue to take those American jobs. So, look, you can do what the President says. It’s going to take some reform, right? It’s going to take, perhaps, a new visa program to do exactly what he’s articulating. Unfortunately, it’s not that H-1B system that we currently have.”
Later, Wolf said that “we probably need to attract some global talent in really specialized fields. But a lot of these H-1Bs are not that.”
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