Bernie Sanders Is Still Wrong About Immigration
As President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration approaches, many of his supporters have spent the last few weeks sparring with each other online over a federal visa program. This week, the U.S. Senate’s most prominent socialist sided with the most far-right wing of the MAGA coalition.
The H-1B program allows companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers in “specialty occupations”—most prominently, as engineers at tech companies. Qualifying positions must utilize “a body of highly specialized knowledge” and “attainment of a bachelor’s [degree] or higher” or its equivalent. Federal law currently limits the number of newly issued H-1B visas to 65,000 per year.
Trump recently expressed support for the program, telling the New York Post, “I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.” (That’s not quite true: In fact, Trump made the process much more difficult during his first term. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, he restricted H-1B visas as “a significant threat to employment opportunities for Americans.”)
Tech billionaires Vivek Ramaswamy and foreign-born Elon Musk, who have been tasked by Trump with finding cuttable waste in the federal budget, have endorsed H-1B as well. But many of Trump’s more nativist supporters see his support for the program as a betrayal of his “America First” pledge. This week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) came out against H-1B, as well.
“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,” Sanders said in a statement. “I disagree.”
As Sanders sees it, the “main function” of guest worker programs like H-1B is “to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad.”
“The cheaper the labor they hire,” charges Sanders, “the more money the billionaires make.”
“Bernie Sanders is right. Elon and Trump are wrong,” claims an X post by Nick Fuentes, a MAGA figure with a long history of racist and antisemitic commentary.
But Sanders is wrong. What’s more, he’s wrong in the same way he’s been wrong for decades.
“Indentured servitude is a contract to work for a single employer for a predetermined period without pay,” David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, wrote in April 2024. “H‑1B workers are not only paid—they receive wages in the top 10 percent of wage earners in the United States. As importantly, although they face more obstacles to changing jobs, H‑1B workers are not tied to a single employer and they change jobs regularly.” Indeed, employers have to pay considerable fees just to hire an H-1B visa holder.
Not only that, but job shifters were even more common than new hires, among H-1B recipients. “In 2023, about 61 percent of all H‑1B workers starting with a new employer were existing H‑1B workers hired away from other employers in the United States,” Bier added. “This means that
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