Vance Says H-1B Visas Should Not Be Used to Replace American Workers

Vice President JD Vance said Sunday that the H-1B visa program “should not exist to replace American workers,” defending the Trump administration’s push to impose steep fees on companies that hire foreign labor instead of American employees.

In a video posted to X, Vance described the administration’s ongoing effort to investigate fraud within the H-1B program and explained one of the central changes under consideration: a $100,000 per-worker fee on companies that use the visa program to replace American staff with foreign hires.

Vance said the administration has been examining what it can do administratively to make sure that when tech companies seek H-1B workers, they are hiring “an actual genius” who will add value to the U.S. economy, rather than simply filling a role with a foreign worker willing to accept lower pay.

“You know, you’re not just replacing one accountant who makes $60,000 with a lower wage foreign accountant who makes $45,000 a year,” Vance said. “That is not what the program exists for. And, so we came up with this idea to impose a $100,000 fee. We’re also looking at various ways of preventing companies that use H-1B visas from laying off a bunch of American workers.”

Vance said he finds it troubling that some companies claim to be desperate for workers when applying for H-1B visas, even though a closer look at their employment history shows they have laid off large numbers of American employees.

“One of the things that I find just shocking about this is, you’ll have a company that applies for an H-1B, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, we’re desperate for workers, we can’t find the workers.’ And, then you go and look at their history, and they’ve laid off 5,000 people,” Vance said. “Well, that’s ridiculous. If you’re laying off American workers, you shouldn’t be going to the market searching for foreign workers to replace them.”

Vance added that the program’s purpose should be to strengthen the American economy, not undercut American wages.

“The H-1B should not exist to replace American workers with low-wage foreigners, it should exist to enrich the American economy and that’s exactly what we’re trying to make sure it does,” Vance said.

The comments follow an announcement last month that the Trump administration would impose a $103,265 fee for each of the 85,000 H-1B workers imported annually by U.S. companies. Companies currently employ at least 730,000 non-immigrant H-1B contract workers, a practice that has coincided with unemployment and underemployment rates for computer science graduates reaching as high as 26 percent.

When the fee was first announced, Vance backed the policy, saying that “if an American corporation need workers, it should hire and train Americans.”