If you ever wondered what would happen if you combined a Ponzi scheme, a Chinese sweatshop, and a Nigerian email scam, the answer is America’s visa system.
Our visa system was supposed to bring in the world’s best and brightest. Instead, it has devolved into one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the American people.
Two of the worst offenders are the H-1B and F-1 programs. The H-1B is a “temporary” work visa that supposedly lets companies hire “highly skilled” foreign workers when they can’t find qualified Americans. In reality, it’s almost never temporary, the workers are low skill, and the companies can find Americans, but don’t want to pay them fair wages – or they’re just flatly discriminating against native-born workers.
The F-1, meanwhile, is the student visa that supposedly brings the world’s best minds to study in America, but increasingly attracts the world’s most creative scammers.
Both were sold as merit-based programs that would benefit America. Both turned into slot machines for fraud.
Every spring, the H-1B program gets flooded with applications filed by well-known American companies. The scale is staggering. Last year, the government received more than 750,000 H-1B applications for just 85,000 slots – even as tens of thousands of native-born Americans were actively looking for jobs.
Companies routinely lie that they need to import foreign talent. They really don’t. They just prefer workers who cost less and are too afraid to quit. You see, when a foreign worker receives an H-1B visa, it is tied to their employer, meaning if they quit their job, they immediately risk deportation. You may remember this economic system by its previous name: indentured servitude.
But the scam really kicks into high gear when an employer wants to transform a temporary H-1B worker into a permanent Green Card holder. Before they can do that, employers first have to test the marketplace to see if there are any qualified Americans interested in the job. If not, then the foreign worker can move forward with their Green Card application.
To avoid getting applications from Americans, the employers “advertise” these jobs in places where no American will ever see them – buried on obscure websites or in the back pages of small-town newspapers. When no one applies, they tell the government, “See? No qualified Americans!” and the visas roll in.
The F-1 student visa system is just as rotten. Student visas are supposed to let foreign nationals come here to study at legitimate universities, then return home after graduation. In reality, it’s become one of Washington’s most abused immigration loopholes.
Once a foreigner gets an F-1 visa, they can legally stay in the country for years and sometimes work in American jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. graduates. Because the system relies almost entirely on the honor code – schools self-report enrollment and job placements – it’s a magnet for fraud. Fake colleges pop up offering phony courses just to issue visa paperwork, and fake students use those documents to live and work here indefinitely.
The most infamous case was the University of Farmington sting in Michigan. Federal agents created a completely fake university – no classes, no professors, not even a campus – and within months hundreds of foreign nationals signed up, happily wiring tuition payments simply to keep their visas active. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seized more than $6 million and made over 160 arrests.
Even when the F-1 program is used legitimately, it still hurts Americans. Every foreign student who takes a seat at a U.S. university displaces an American kid who earned that spot. Colleges eagerly admit them because they pay tuition rates that can be twice as high as what domestic students pay.
Many of those students come from nations that are anything but friendly to the United States. We’re literally educating the next generation of foreign adversaries, arming them with American knowledge, research, and technology – all while our own students drown in debt or get wait-listed. The universities get richer, the country gets weaker.
For decades, Washington looked the other way as corrupt visa programs spiraled out of control. Big Tech wanted cheap labor. Colleges wanted higher tuition from foreign students. Democrats wanted future voters. And Republicans, terrified of being called racist, decided silence was the better part of cowardice.
Then Donald J. Trump walked in, smelled the grift, and decided to make cheating expensive. His simplest but most effective change: a $100,000 fee for every new H-1B application you file. Previously, the cost was around $2,000.
If companies truly need to import talent, they should be willing to pony up. If they’re just trying to save a buck – well, good luck with that. The fee turns volume fraud into financial suicide.
Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, which had previously made frequent use of H-1B visas, has effectively acknowledged this new reality. Late last month, Walmart suspended H-1B job offers over the Trump policy. Surprise, surprise – when faced with a $100,000 price tag for H-1Bs, suddenly Walmart discovered plenty of qualified Americans that it wasn’t hiring before.
Corporate executives are already getting the message. Walmart, America’s largest private employer, recently announced it is suspending hiring H-1Bs. In the first half of this year, Walmart received more than 2,000 H-1Bs – more than any other retail chain. Today, those visas would cost Walmart an additional $200 million.
Trump is also cleaning up the F-1 program, shutting down the “forever student” loophole. Under Biden, student visas were basically lifetime passes. You could arrive at eighteen, major in “Applied Video Game Enjoyment,” and stay in America until you died of old age. Trump’s DHS is ending that scam by enforcing finite terms, stricter renewals, and on-site visits to verify that students’ employers and jobs actually exist.
Finally, Trump is rolling out the Trump Gold Card – a brand new residency program for people who actually bring something to the table besides a sob story. In exchange for a $1 million gift to the U.S. Treasury, investors and entrepreneurs can receive expedited U.S. residency (after DHS vetting, of course).
Naturally, the left is in full cardiac arrest, wailing that Trump’s reforms will monetize our visa system – as if the last 30 years didn’t already do that to an absurd degree. The only difference now is that the money isn’t flowing to global corporations and America-hating college professors, but to American taxpayers.
America doesn’t owe anyone a visa, least of all a visa obtained through deceit. Trump’s reforms are a great first step to rebuild an immigration system that works for the people who actually live here. For the first time in a generation, the government is on the side of its own citizens.
Mike Marlowe is the pen name of a writer based in Texas.
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