The new age of President Turmp has put a hard focus on America First. The idea is a phenomenal one, but we should not have gotten to a point where America First is forced to be a battle cry. Americans should always come first, but for decades now, we have not come first. Instead of helping out own, our government believes the U.S. needs to a beacon to solve all the world's problems while not fixing our own. News flash: that is not our job as a country.
A huge part of that has been an obscene focus on putting immigrants, both legal and illegal, ahead of our own interests. Making sure they are set up to achieve the American dream while lifelong Americans struggle to pay rent. That has dripped into the workforce through the use of H1B visas, which was started in 1990.
The program allows people, some qualified and some not, to come work here under a temporary status. What was started as a small gesture has quickly spiraled amok and opened the door to millions of immigrants applying and subsequently taking jobs from qualified Americans.
Simon Hankison of the Heritage Foundation says this 35-year-old program has some qualified workers applying, but it is riddled more so with fraudulent applicants and underqualified workers.
"The program is also much bigger now. The spouses of H1B's can work, there are 20,000 extra that can work in STEM fields...the program is much, much bigger now than it was intended to be," he says.
The program has grown so large it has almost become a cancerous tumor on the American job force. In multiple instances across especially larger companies, American workers train these H1B recipients, only to be fired by the company after doing so. All for companies to save pennies on the dollar compared to their overall worth.
Again, it is not Americas job to coddle the world and welcome in anyone to work. But somehow, we have warped this small idea into welcoming in anyone, qualified or not, to take American jobs and if you do not agree, you are labeled a "racist."
Some are qualified, sure. But a lot of the program has people blindly applying hoping to come into the country. That needs to stop.
"Others lied about qualifications, or the employer was lying about the job, how much they would pay them, and so on," says Hankinson. "Over the years, the rules have been changed by subsequent administrations to expand the program, without Congress having a say so in changing the law."
That expansion has only riddled the program with fraudulent applicants and opened the door wide to allow millions of immigrants to blindly flood into the country.
You would think speaking against it, and changing the law to put Americans first, would not be controversial. But leave it to liberal-backed companies to screw that up, like they do most things.
"Amazon, Meta, all these companies are firing tens of thousands of Americans, while at the same time, hiring tens of thousands of foreign workers," Hankinson says.
He adds that now there are more eyes on this, there could be changes to the program coming soon.
Whether or not that happens remains to be seen. But if we are truly going to be America First, as we should be, this program needs to be repaired or totally abolished.