OPINION:
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Democrat, is trying again with his High-Skilled Immigration Reform for Employment (HIRE) Act, first introduced in July 2023. Back then, in the middle of the worst man-made immigration disaster in U.S. history, the bill seemed tone deaf. Now, it just seems nuts.
Graduate unemployment is pushing 10% — double the national average. Nalin Haley, a recent graduate of Villanova University (and son of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley) summed up the situation for his cohort: “None of my friends have a job.”
High unemployment for recent graduates hasn’t spared the elite schools, nor the vaunted “STEM” degrees. Ask any parent of college-age children — it’s an ugly job market. And everyone knows companies will use AI wherever possible to avoid hiring humans; we just don’t know how bad it’ll be.
In less than a year, the national conversation on H-1Bs has gone from “reform or expand” to “reform or eliminate.”
Apparently oblivious to this, Mr. Krishnamoorti’s HIRE Act would double the number of H-1B visas issued every year. Currently, H-1B visas are (supposed to be) capped at 65,000, but there are another 20,000 for STEM graduates, and no limit at all on H-1Bs for most universities and non-profit groups.
In addition, an Obama-era rule allows spouses of H-1B holders to work as well, many of whom work in the same fields as H-1B visa holders but with no minimum salary.
All told, over 400,000 H-1Bs were issued or renewed last year.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi repeats the decades-old claim that there is a “skills gap” in the U.S. — a mismatch between “the skills required for jobs that employers need to fill, and the skills possessed by current prospective employees.” But a panel of experts at a recent Heritage Foundation event strongly disagreed. The problem, they explained, isn’t a shortage of American talent; it’s the perverse incentives that exist for companies to hire H-1Bs instead of U.S. graduates and to replace American workers with foreign labor.
The point of Mr. Krishnamoorthi’s HIRE Act is to double the H-1B limit from 65,000 to 130,000. To help this medicine go down, his bill throws more money at K-12 STEM programs. This is a tired ploy that H-1B pushers have used for decades — pay today for promised rewards tomorrow that they never deliver. The same employers who have donated millions to such STEM educational programs somehow claim they still can’t find Americans to fill the jobs, many years later.
Although we do need to improve K-12 education, there are still plenty of qualified U.S. graduates to fill corporate vacancies. It’s just that if large employers can hire cheaper foreign labor, they will.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi’s claim that the H-1B visa is “drawing the best talent from around the world” is bogus. Based on their education, resumes, and salaries, most H-1B holders are average workers. As I discuss in my recent report on H-1Bs, the majority are paid lower wages than the average for the jobs they do. That’s why we recommended scrapping the H-1B lottery and replacing it with a wage-ranked system. Need real “talent”? Pay more for it.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi is a prolific fundraiser. His major donors include law firms that profit from work visas, and companies that sponsor H-1Bs. One major donor appears to have sponsored about 200 H-1Bs in the past decade.
In 2023, Mr. Krisnamoorthi noted that the HIRE bill was “supported by ITServe Alliance, the largest association of IT Services organizations functioning across the United States.” The ITServe Alliance says its “mission is to empower IT services and consulting firms by advocating for their interests.”
The interest of ITServe’s members is in preserving lucrative H-1B staffing and outsourcing businesses. More visas, more money. Based on this video of a meeting in Seattle, ITServe sees Trump as an obstacle to their business model. When the Trump administration recently added a $100,000 fee to new H-1B petitions, ITServe successfully sued to make sure it would not apply to applicants already in the U.S., usually on student visas.
Notably, out of more than 100 people on ITServe’s webpage under “leadership,” I counted only one who was not ethnic Indian. (Only five were women.) As it happens, three-quarters of H-1B visa holders come from India. This makes one skeptical of ITServe Alliance President Vinay Mahajan’s claim “the U.S. has a large skills gap” — since conveniently, that’s one that his group’s members can fill, at great profit.
For the 2025 reboot of the HIRE Act, ITServe Alliance is still a booster. No surprise there. But this time, the organization’s board chairman, Raghu Chittimalla, said that the HIRE Act would help “retain the best global talent while protecting American workers.” The last part pays at least lip service to the concerns of Americans.
But as the Washington Free Beacon has reported, many ostensibly American tech companies are advertising to hire visa holders only, expressly excluding U.S. citizens. This is not only shameless national or ethnic-based nepotism, but it’s illegal — discrimination on the basis of national origin.
The HIRE Act will not fix what ails American K-12 education. But it would allow another 65,000 lower-wage, average-skilled workers, plus their spouses, to compete with struggling U.S. graduates.
With U.S. companies taking heat for firing thousands of workers domestically while they hire abroad, the motive — and the timing — of this bill could not be worse. The HIRE Act clearly deserves a pink slip.
• Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
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