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Op-ed: Build it better in America

(03-09-16) 500-40-418

BY STATE SENATOR SANDERS, JR.

President Trump has added a new motto to his repertoire. Not only does he want to make America Great Again, now he is calling on the people of the USA to Buy American, Hire American – that is Trump’s slogan for a new initiative, which directs federal agencies to review a visa program used by companies to hire high-skilled foreign workers in the U.S.

On April 18, Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the interagency review of the H1-B Visa program. The visa program allows U.S. companies to hire foreign workers to fill jobs for which there is no qualified American worker. The U.S. Labor department chooses 65,000 workers and 20,000 graduate students each year out of a much greater number of applicants – 199,000 last year alone. Researchers estimate there are 600,000 to 900,000 H1B visa-holders in the U.S.A. today.

The H1B visa is supposed to benefit the U.S. economy by inviting workers specialized in fields like biotechnology or engineering where demand outstrips domestic supply, but critics charge that large corporations exploit these visas to outsource jobs, especially in-house IT jobs, to cheaper foreign workers. There is some truth to that. IT outsourcing firms, whose business is to replace domestic IT workers, do make up roughly a third of all H1B visa applications. In 2015, reports emerged that Disney had laid off hundreds of IT workers and replaced them with outsourced workers brought in on visas. Apparently, they were not alone in using such tactics.

Although it was part of his populist campaign platform, then, reforming the H1B visa is relatively uncontroversial. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have both sought to correct and improve the program. There is a hitch, however, in Trump’s announcement: it is unclear what actual impact it will have, if any at all. Currently, it only asks for a review of the options.

So, like many of Trump’s executive orders and actions, the H1B visa order seems more like a desperate attempt to fulfill a campaign promise than a serious piece of policy. However, it has the potential to be beneficial.

Trump could order the current H1B lottery system changed and insist upon tougher applicant reviews so that visas are only awarded to the most skilled, best-paid immigrant workers. Likewise, he could make it tougher for outsourcing firms to operate under the H1B, or he could make it harder for firms to prove that the jobs they are filling really aren’t available domestically. In any case, the H1B visa will in fact survive in some form. Some experts are suggesting that even the ideas floated so far would not go far enough in revising the program.

In addition to stricter rules about outsourcing work, we as Americans, need to make sure that we prepare the next generation to have the skills to fill the jobs that are being lost oversees. The bottom line is we need to think globally and hire locally.