White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday said US President Donald Trump holds a “very nuanced and commonsense opinion” on H-1B visas and reiterated that he does not support the replacement of American workers by foreign employees.
“The President does not support American workers being replaced,” Leavitt told reporters during a briefing at the White House. Responding to a question about concerns that H-1B visa holders were taking jobs from Americans, she said the President’s stance on the issue has been misrepresented.
On the broader H-1B debate, Leavitt stressed that Trump “has a very nuanced and commonsense opinion on this issue. He wants to see if foreign companies are investing trillions of dollars in the United States of America, and they're bringing foreign workers with them to create very niche things like batteries, he wants to see that at the beginning to get those manufacturing facilities and those factories up and running.”
She added that Trump ultimately wants American workers to fill these roles and has made that clear to foreign investors, telling them they “better be hiring my people if you're going to be doing business in the United States. So there's been a lot of misunderstanding of the President's position.”
Leavitt said the President aims to revitalise American manufacturing. “That's part of what he's doing with his effective use of tariffs and cutting good trade deals around the world. That's why he's recruited trillions and trillions of dollars in investments into our country. Those are creating good-paying American jobs right here at home,” she said.
Trump has recently faced criticism from some of his MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters over his remarks on skilled foreign workers. Addressing the backlash, the President said he would “welcome” skilled immigrants who can help build complex products such as chips and missiles and “teach” American workers, acknowledging that he may take a “little heat” from his base, which generally favours stricter immigration policies.
He has pointed out that numerous “extremely complex” plants are now being built in the US, contributing significantly to economic growth. Because of the specialised nature of these facilities, Trump said companies will need to bring in experts from overseas who can train American workers.
“But if you have to bring people to get those plants opened, we want you to do that, and we want those people to teach our people how to make computer chips and how to make other things,” he has said.
Companies investing billions in chip manufacturing, he argued, cannot simply “hire people off an unemployment line to run it.”
“They're going to have to bring thousands of people with them, and I'm going to welcome those people,” Trump added.
He further stated that no company can operate a major chip plant “with people that don't even know what a chip looks like.” Defending the H-1B programme, Trump said the US must attract talent from abroad because the country lacks “certain talents.”
Visas such as H-1B and L1 allow US companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialised roles. While the Trump administration has intensified its crackdown on illegal immigration, the H-1B visa programme has also drawn scrutiny from supporters who allege widespread misuse and claim that American workers are losing jobs to foreign employees.