US President Donald Trump appeared to defend the H-1B visa program and said the US needs to bring in talent from around the world as the country lacks “certain talent”.
Trump said this while answering a question asked in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News. He was asked whether the issue of H-1B visas would not be a major priority for his administration.
The interviewer said that if someone wants to raise the wages of American workers, millions of foreign workers cannot be allowed to come into the country. In response, Trump said that I agree, but you have to bring talents also. When Ingraham said “we have a lot of talent,” Trump said, “No, you don’t.” You don’t have any special talents. And people will have to learn.
The President said that you cannot remove people from the unemployment queue and say, ‘I will employ you in some factory, we will make missiles’. In Georgia, they conducted raids to find illegal immigrants. There were people from South Korea who made batteries all their lives. You know, making batteries is very complicated. This is not an easy task, and is also very dangerous. Lots of explosions, lots of problems. He had around 500-600 people in the initial phase to make batteries and teach people this work. Well, they wanted him out of the country.
But “you’re going to need… I mean, I know you and I disagree on this,” he said. You cannot just say that some country is going to come, invest 10 billion US dollars to build a plant and remove people from the unemployment line who have not worked for five years, and they are going to start making missiles. It doesn’t work that way.
The Trump administration has launched a sweeping crackdown to investigate abuses in the H-1B visa program. This program is used by companies, especially technology companies, to hire foreign workers to the US. Indian professionals, including technology workers and doctors, constitute the largest group of H-1B visa holders.
In September this year, Trump made a proclamation titled “Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers” as an important initial step in reforming the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program. Under this announcement, certain H-1B petitions filed after September 21, 2025 are required to make an additional payment of $100,000 as a condition of eligibility.
