Ron DeSantis Slams H-1B Visas, Outflanks Donald Trump

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is using the uproar over the H-1B visa program to publicly move to the political right of President-elect Donald Trump on the hot-button issue of migration.

The break came when DeSantis slammed the program as “horrible” after Trump signaled his support for the H-1B visa program used by major investors — such as Elon Musk — to import college-graduate migrants for white-collar jobs.

DeSantis “is taking advantage of the disconnect between Trump and his own voters on this issue,” as he prepares to snatch the 2028 nomination from incoming Vice President J.D. Vance, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“This is just normal political jockeying, and it would not exist if the President were an actual [migration] restrictionist and was in tune with his own voters on this issue,” he told Breitbart News on January 10.

DeSantis slammed the H-1B program during a January 9 press conference where he explained why he wants to nominate a critic of the H-1B program to the Senate seat now held by outgoing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).

DeSantis said:

So H-1B visas have been used to bring in people who can perform tasks at much cheaper rates than American workers. So we’ve had situations where companies will bring in H-1B [workers], the U.S. workers will train their own replacements, and then they fire the American workers. How is that something in the best interest of the American people?

Here’s the thing, when the corporation brings them in, the H-1Bs, they they work for less. They’re basically indentured servants. If Google brings you in, you can’t then just show up and work for Microsoft because they pay you more — you’re indebted to [Google]. So I think it’s been a horrible program in terms of how it’s done.

He continued:

You often hear we’ve got to bring in the best and the brightest. So if you have a budding Einstein in Botswana, you can bring them here [but]  you would not use H-1B [visa] for that. We have something called the O[-1] visa … for people who are of extraordinary ability. I’m a big supporter of having limits on all immigration categories [but] there’s actually no statutory limit on the O visa because there’s a natural limit, right? I mean, only so many people are going to be truly exceptional, so you have the ability to do that through the O visa program.

And I think the H-1B has really been used by corporations to help get cheaper labor. The fact that they’re indentured to the company, to me, is a huge, huge problem.

And here’s the thing, we spend how much money on universities in this country? How much does the federal government plow into Ivy League universities? We obviously spend money here in the state of Florida — [although] we have the lowest state tuition in the country, and we will keep it that way. We have, obviously, have a high-ranked public university system. We’re proud of that. But we can’t produce enough engineers? Of course we can. I think that we’re producing them [but] they’ll work for higher rates than the [H-1B] people who are brought in from foreign countries.

But if … the demand isn’t being met [by universities], isn’t that an indictment on the American education system, that we’re spending all this money? …. It’s also the case if you look at H-1B, It’s been used for accountants … are you trying to tell me that that’s so specialized that you have to bring in a foreigner, that an American wouldn’t be able to do that?

So I think Congress should absolutely get involved in this program. I think its really been rife with problems and abuses.

DeSantis’ move was applauded by some Trump voters who are disappointed by Trump’s tacit support for the wide-scale use of Indian white-collar migrants in place of U.S. college graduates.

“This issue alone has me won over for DeSantis 2028,” said Twitter user Noumenon. “We need people that are willing to push for American Workers. Given J.D. Vance’s previous positions, I really hope he i) openly, but respectfully disagrees with Trump and Elon and ii) brings up his experience as a VC for tech.”

Like most politicians, Trump zig-zags between the competing demands of his coalition. So the more protests that he sees against the H-1B program, the more likely he is to curb investors’ demands for many more foreign graduates.

The little-known mass replacement of U.S. graduates was widely exposed over Christmas when Elon Musk triggered a huge debate on Twitter. Trump provided partial backing to Musk, even though recent polls show that the white-collar migration programs are unpopular among GOP voters needed for the 2026 mid-term election.

The H-1B program, and several other visa programs, keep a population of at least 1.5 million foreign contract workers in the professional jobs needed by both young and experienced American graduates. In 2022, roughly 230,000 Americans will graduate with engineering or computer-related degrees, up from 100,000 in 2000, but a 2021 government report said about half never find starter jobs in companies flooded with cheap and subordinate foreign workers and managers.

The foreign graduates rationally accept lower wages and subordinate status in U.S. companies mostly because they hope to win hugely valuable, government–granted green cards and then citizenship. Many Twitter reports from American and Indian graduates say imported managers also prefer to sell jobs to people from their home districts instead of allowing skilled Americans to win the jobs on merit.

“When I go to work, in Silicon Valley, it’s rare I see any Americans at all,” said Twitter user WatersofBabylon:

Everyone, literally, is Indian, with a smattering of Chinese. Just recently I was at a meeting of all director and above leaders for my product, and I was the only one (of about 25) who was not Indian male. Picking a random senior director of engineering at random from our corporate directory, who is Indian, he has 36 US-based employees. Of them 2 are American, 2 are Chinese, the rest Indian. All of his bosses up to the CEO are Indian. This is not an outlier. This is a typical director and I could pick virtually any in our engineering org and see the same thing. If you walk into our San Jose cafeteria at lunch time, you’d think you’d been magically transported to Bangalore. You would see almost nobody but Indians.

So far, most Democrats are silent as the investor vs. professional rift widens in Trump’s coalition. “They see this as an opportunity to score political points,” Krikorian said.

Democrats, however, have fully supported the white-collar visa worker programs — and the inflow of southern migrants — partly because California’s wealthy investors and their allied groups have much clout in the party.

Indian support for the H-1B program remains strong. For example, an Indian immigrant Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) tweeted;