Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the administration will admit 600,000 foreign students to help lower-tier colleges avoid bankruptcy, and will also upgrade the immigration process to favor higher-earning migrants.
Laura Ingraham, the host of “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News, asked Lutnick on Monday evening: “Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, how is allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?”
The question was prompted by President Donald Trump’s comments earlier that day that the U.S. would continue to welcome students from China as he also mentioned 600,000 foreign students.
“Well, the President’s point of view is that what would happen if you didn’t have those 600,000 students is that … the bottom 15 percent of universities and colleges would go out of business in America,” Lutnick responded.
Lutnick continued:
I’m involved in changing the H-1B [work visa] program [for foreign, white-collar contract workers], right? We’re going to change that program because that’s terrible, right?
We’re going to change the green card [for legal immigrants]…. The average American makes $75,000 a year, and the average [immigrant] green card recipient [makes] $66,000. So we’re taking the bottom quartile [of potential migrants]. Like, why are we doing that?
That’s why Donald Trump is going to change [the immigration process]. That’s the Gold Card that’s coming. And that’s where we’re going to start picking the best people to come into this country.
However, Lutnick did not discuss the plans in detail, leaving open the possibility that the 600,000 foreign students include young men and women from many countries around the world.
In the 2023-24 period, U.S. officials allowed almost 280,000 Chinese people to get degrees at U.S. colleges, ranging in quality from the Ivy League down to so-called “visa mills.” U.S. officials also allowed 332,000 Indians to enroll in colleges.
The admissions also allowed these migrants to get OPT work permits for the career-starting white-collar jobs sought by normal, skilled American graduates.
The H-1B program and other similar escalators allow U.S. employers to keep at least 1.5 million mixed-skill foreign graduates in jobs that would otherwise be held by young American graduates who are also seeking homes and families.
News reports say that a pending regulatory reform would end the lottery that awards H-1B visas by random chance to employers. Instead, officials want to award the H-1B permits to the highest-paying employers, hopefully creating an economic incentive for companies to not fill American starter jobs with desperate, subordinate foreign graduates.
“Those are 600,000 [university] spots that American kids won’t get,” Ingraham said in response to Lutnick’s comments. “I think our American engineering students need to be given the first role at every job, and I think they’re brilliant when given half a chance.”
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