Guest worker proponents defend H-1B program as radical left and extreme right come together to shred it

TOI correspondent from Washington: A storied socialist Senator who jumped into the H1B visa fracas by embracing the MAGA position that US big tech is “replacing good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad” was stung by critics from both sides of the aisle as America continued to buzz with arguments for and against foreign — mostly Indian — guest workers.
In an illustration of the radical left and the extreme right coming together on the H-1B issue, former Presidential candidate and self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders aligned himself with the MAGA sentiment on Friday by maintaining his long standing view that the foreign guest worker visa program is not hiring “the best and the brightest,” but making more money for billionaires like Elon Musk by providing cheaper labor.
While some MAGA critics chewed him up for not doing enough curtail immigration and even voting for it, pushback to his stand on the H-1B visa program came from, among others, an Indian cardiologist who said he was trained at the elite Mayo Clinic and had served in rural Kansas, which, without the H-1B visa that gave him path to US citizenship, “would have been impossible.”
“Before hiring me, my employer struggled for over a year to find a qualified, well-trained cardiologist to serve rural Kansas,” the doctor who identified himself as Anil, tweeted, offering to meet Sanders “to provide a clearer picture of how the H1B program supports underserved communities and strengthens our nation.”
While there is an acknowledged shortage of doctors and engineers in specialty fields in the US, the MAGA stand is that the H-1B visa is part of a guest worker program and should not provide a path to citizenship, and that foreign professionals should return home. Some MAGA also argue that the US produces enough native born professionals and the H-1B is used by big tech only to depress the wages of US-born workers.
But proponents of the H1B program argue that not all H-1B guest workers are “mediocre” or “low wage” as MAGA portrays them to be. Some of America’s top tech honchos like Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, and Sundar Pichai took the H-1B route to US citizenship and created tremendous value and jobs for America.
One American immigration attorney pointed out in a long thread on X that most H-1B holders originally came to the US pursue their postgraduate education, many in elite institutions such as MIT, U Mass, UC Berkeley, and many others “we all recognize as solid school. And they tend to have 4.0 GPAs.”
“I beg you not to fall victim to bad information and start decrying legal immigrants. They go through hell complying with our laws. They are not the problem,” Anna Gorisch, Texas-based immigration attorney said, suggesting that if anything, critics should be angry at the Biden administration for creating a horrific mess with illegal immigration through its border policy.
“It is frankly racist and terribly ignorant to claim all universities in India are diploma mills. (If anything, I’d suggest that’s US universities.) I have a client who published a patent through her undergrad coursework in India,” Gorisch wrote.
Another American recruiter working for a major casino/hospitality corporation that sponsors H-1B employees acknowledged that some of them work as housekeepers and line cooks, and while these are not good paying jobs, “I rarely see Americans willing to work their asses off like our H-1B employees.”