Taking on Musk, Sanders Says Corporate Abuse of H-1B Visa Program Must End

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a longtime advocate of reforming H-1B visas, on Thursday reiterated his argument that "widespread corporate abuse" of the guest worker program must end amid a heated battle among Republican President-elect Donald Trump's allies.

"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," said Sanders (I-Vt.), a prominent advocate of pro-worker policies including raising the federal minimum wage, in a lengthy statement.

"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," he asserted. "The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make."

"If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers?"

The fight has pitted some far-right, anti-immigrant Trump supporters against Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaires charged with leading the president-elect's proposed Department of Government Efficiency. Musk, who was born in South Africa and is now the world's richest person, has said he once had an H-1B visa and declared last week that "I will go to war on this issue."

Musk is also CEO of the electric vehicle company Tesla and has used H-1B visas as an employer. So has Trump. The incoming president—who in 2016 pledged to eliminate "rampant, widespread" abuse of "H-1B as a cheap labor program"—said Saturday that "I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program."

Faced with accusations that those remarks represented a shift from his previous criticism of the program, Trump toldFox News on Tuesday: "I didn't change my mind. I've always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country, and we need competent people... We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in. We're going to have jobs like we've never had before."

As Common Dreamsreported Sunday, progressives are arguing that both the anti-immigrant and billionaire supporters of Trump are wrong. Krystal Ball, co-host of the online news show "Breaking Points," said that "the truth is if you are struggling it's likely because of billionaire robber barons like Trump, Elon, and Vivek, who rig the rules to screw regular people."

Sanders noted that "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% 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."

Taking aim at just one of Musk's companies on Thursday, the senator asked: "If there is really a shortage of skilled tech workers in America, why did Tesla lay off over 7,500 American workers this year—including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas—while being approved to employ thousands of H-1B guest workers?"

"Moreover, if these jobs are only going to 'the best and brightest,' why has Tesla employed H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as little as $58,000, associate mechanical engineers for as little as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as $80,000 a year?" he continued. "Those don't sound like highly specialized jobs that are for the top 0.1% as Musk claimed this week."

The senator shared his statement on the Musk-owned social media platform X, formerly called Twitter. Multiple other users shared videos of Sanders criticizing the H-1B program on television and the Senate floor going back to 2007, his first year in the chamber.

"If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers?" Sanders asked. "Can we really not find English teachers in America?"

The senator expressed support for using the program as a temporary fix for labor shortages in highly specialized areas while also arguing that "in the long term, if the United States is going to be able to compete in a global economy, we must make sure that we have the best-educated workforce in the world. And one way to help make that happen is to substantially increase the guest worker fees large corporations pay to fund scholarships, apprenticeships, and job training opportunities for American workers."

"Further, we must also significantly raise the minimum wage for guest workers, allow them to easily switch jobs, and make sure that corporations are required to aggressively recruit American workers first before they can hire workers from overseas," he added. "It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker."

While Musk, Ramaswamy, and others "are right" that "we need a highly skilled and well-educated workforce," Sanders said, "the answer is to hire qualified American workers first and to make certain that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce that our country needs for the jobs of the future. And that's not just engineering. We are in desperate need of more doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers, electricians, plumbers, and a host of other professions."

In addition to blasting the ultrarich beneficiaries of the H-1B program like Musk and Trump, Sanders called out decades-old lies about the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and permanent normal trade relations with China.

"Thirty years ago, the economic elite and political establishment in both major parties told us not to worry about the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that would come as a result of disastrous unfettered free trade agreements," he said. "They promised that those lost jobs would be more than offset by the many good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs that would be created in the United States."

Sanders stressed that "not only have corporations exported millions of blue-collar manufacturing jobs to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries, they are now importing hundreds of thousands of low-paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar technology jobs that are available."

"At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the richest three people in America now own more wealth than the bottom half of our country, and when the CEOs of major corporations make almost 300 times more than their average workers, we need fundamental changes in our economic policies," he concluded. "We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. And one important way forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms in the H-1B program."

Other progressives echoed the senator—including Nina Turner, who co-chaired his 2020 presidential campaign and said on Thursday that "Sen. Sanders is right. We must stand against worker exploitation in all forms, be it American workers, workers overseas, or immigrant workers here in America. The ruling class wants cheap labor and will game any system to secure it."

Like Turner, Howard University professor Ron Hira, who co-authored the book Outsourcing America, also weighed in on X.

"Sen. Sanders has been leading the fight for H-1B reform for 20 years," Hira said Thursday. "He's made floor speeches and was the only 2016 Dem presidential candidate to publicly criticize Disney for replacing its U.S. workers with H-1Bs. His framing is exactly right. CEOs are trying to pull a fast one."