Washington DC : US Vice President JD Vance has yet again defended President Donald Trump's reforms to the H-1B visa programme, arguing that the current system is being misused to undercut American workers' wages by importing talent at discounted rates.
Speaking at the Turning Point USA Event in Mississippi on Wednesday, Vance said the administration's push for H-1B reform was aimed at ensuring fairness for US workers and restoring the visa's original purpose--to retain top global talent, not replace domestic labour with cheaper alternatives.
"Legal immigration is complicated because we let in about a million legal immigrants into the United States of America every single year. And the evidence is pretty clear that a lot of those immigrants are actually undercutting the wages of American workers," Vance said.
"It's one of the reasons why the President of the United States and a lot of us in the administration have encouraged H-1B reform," he added.Explaining the intent behind the programme, Vance said, "If you look at the H-1B visa, what it's supposed to be is that you have a super genius who's studying at an American university and who's working at a great company. You want that super genius to stay in the United States of America and not go somewhere else. What it's actually used to do is hire an accountant at a 50 per cent discount for an American citizen. I don't think that we should be hiring accountants from foreign countries when we've got accountants right here in the United States that would love to work for a good wage."
Vance's comments come amid escalating debate over the proclamation that will trigger a major overhaul of the H-1B visa petition, signed by Trump in September.According to the proclamation, there will now be a USD 100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications, a sharp increase from the previous level of about USD 1,500.
According to the US State Department, the new fee requirement applies only to individuals or companies filing new H-1B petitions or entering the H-1B lottery after September 21.Current visa holders and petitions submitted before that date remain unaffected. Under the proclamation, a USD 100,000 payment must accompany every new H-1B visa petition filed after the deadline, including those submitted for entries in the 2026 lottery.
The Vice President also underscored the administration's broader goal of reducing overall immigration numbers, saying that the current volume of legal and illegal entrants was unsustainable."There are people who want to come to the United States of America, and some of them I'm sure can enrich the United States of America by coming here, but we have got to get our overall numbers way down. Too many people have come into the United States of America," he said.
During the same event, Vance was asked a personal question about his interfaith household and whether he hopes his wife, Usha Vance, who is Hindu, will convert to Christianity, to which the US VP replied, "Yeah, I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian gospel and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.""But if she doesn't, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn't cause a problem for me. That's something you work out with your friends, with your family, with the person that you love," he added.