Bernie Sanders Plans to Force Vote on H-1B Reforms

Exclusive: Sen. Bernie Sanders is planning amendments to raise income levels of H-1B visas and curtail abuses.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., plans to shake things up with a new political fight over the controversial H-1B visa program. What began as a dispute on social media over the last week will soon hit the halls of Congress.

A source close to his office told me that the senator is drafting several amendments to improve the program radically – including raising income levels for foreign workers taking jobs through the H-1B visa and hiking the application fees for corporations utilizing the program. The push is a reprisal of similar 2007 amendments Sanders offered during the debate over the Bush immigration bill. During that period, he worked closely with his Republican colleagues.

The new amendments will be attached to major legislation offered over the coming weeks — essentially forcing lawmakers to go on the record.

Sanders is currently in talks with potential cosponsors and expects to bring a unique pro-American labor coalition of Democrats and Republicans together to crack down on H-1B abuse.

The Vermont senator, now a ranking member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, may benefit from a reshuffle in committee assignments. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., two Republican opponents of visa programs used by corporations to import foreign workers, have joined the committee this year.

The issue set off the first major rift in the incoming Trump administration over last week's Christmas holiday. The issue boiled over when Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and other prominent advisers of the president pushed to expand the H-1B visa program and allow more foreign workers. In response, thousands of MAGA supporters reacted with outrage.

Grassroots supporters of Trump have noted that the H-1B visas have been exploited in the past to suppress American wages and view the efforts to “uncap” the program as a violation of President-elect Donald Trump’s America First principles and promises to end the program.

In 2016, Trump cited the controversy over Disney forcing laid-off American workers to train their H-1B replacements. He promised to get rid of the program. “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions,” Trump said in a statement.

Trump, however, has taken a complete reversal and now sides with his Silicon Valley allies.

"I didn't change my mind. I've always felt we have to have the most competent people in this country,” Trump told reporters at his New Year's Eve party earlier this week in response to a question on H-1B visas. “We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in,” he continued.

Yesterday, Sanders weighed in to the dispute:

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the H-1B guest worker program. Elon Musk and a number of other billionaire tech company owners have argued that this federal program is vital to our economy because of the scarcity of highly skilled American engineers and other tech workers. I disagree. The main function of the H-1B visa program and other guest worker initiatives is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad.

The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make. In 2022 and 2023, the top 30 corporations using this program laid off at least 85,000 American workers while they hired over 34,000 new H-1B guest workers. There are estimates that as many as 33 percent of all new Information Technology jobs in America are being filled by guest workers. Further, according to Census Bureau data, there are millions of Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math who are not currently employed in those professions.

The fight rehashes simmering tensions between management and labor. The Economic Policy Institute and other credible researchers have found that major American corporations have long exploited the H-1B visa program. Though intended for skills-based temporary migration, evidence strongly shows that H-1B workers are tapped to bring down American wages. H-1B visa workers also have less ability to bargain for better working conditions, given that they are tied to their employers.

In 2007, during the debate over the Bush immigration bill, Sanders played a similar role, partnering with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to reform the H-1B visa program. The Grassley-Sanders amendment, for instance, was designed to prohibit companies engaged in layoffs from hiring H-1B workers. The amendment was backed by the AFL-CIO, the Programmers Guild and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and opposed by many of the major corporate lobby groups, including organizations represented by Wal-Mart, Dell and Microsoft.