Vice President JD Vance said the H-1B program should not replace U.S. workers, backing a $100,000 fee and fraud probe against companies laying off Americans.
In a video message posted Sunday on X, Vance drew a hard line on the specialty-occupation visa system that tech firms and other employers use to bring in foreign labor. He said the program exists to strengthen the American economy, not to swap out U.S. payrolls for cheaper overseas hires.
Breitbart News reported the vice president’s remarks as the Trump administration continues administrative steps to curb abuse, including a six-figure fee on companies and a wider look at fraud inside the program.
Vance put the problem in plain terms. Companies claim they cannot find workers, then turn around and cut thousands of American jobs before hunting for H-1B replacements.
"One of the things that I find just shocking about this is, you’ll have a company that applies for an H-1B, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, we’re desperate for workers, we can’t find the workers.’ And, then you go and look at their history, and they’ve laid off 5,000 people."
His next line left little room for spin.
"Well, that’s ridiculous. If you’re laying off American workers, you shouldn’t be going to the market searching for foreign workers to replace them."
Vance described a $100,000 per-worker fee the administration can impose administratively. The point, he said, is to stop routine wage undercutting while still allowing true high-value talent that lifts the country.
He rejected the common pattern of swapping a mid-level American for a lower-paid foreign hire.
"You know, you’re not just replacing one accountant who makes $60,000 with a lower wage foreign accountant who makes $45,000 a year. That is not what the program exists for. And, so we came up with this idea to impose a $100,000 fee. We’re also looking at various ways of preventing companies that use H-1B visas from laying off a bunch of American workers."
Earlier reporting cited in the same coverage put the announced figure at $103,265 for each of the roughly 85,000 H-1B workers companies import each year. Vance backed that approach and said corporations that need workers should hire and train Americans first.
The vice president framed the standard clearly: the visa should go to “an actual genius” who will enrich the United States, not to a low-wage substitute. He repeated the core rule in the Sunday video.
"The H-1B should not exist to replace American workers with low-wage foreigners, it should exist to enrich the American economy and that’s exactly what we’re trying to make sure it does."
Companies already employ at least 730,000 non-immigrant H-1B contract workers in roles that American college graduates need. Unemployment and underemployment among computer science graduates has reached as high as 26 percent. Those numbers sit beside the annual inflow of tens of thousands more visa holders.
That pressure on new graduates and mid-career workers is exactly why the administration is pairing the fee with tighter controls on who can keep using the program after large domestic layoffs. Vance’s fraud task force work has already shown how aggressively the White House is hunting waste and abuse across federal programs.
The Sunday message sits on top of an earlier investigation Vance announced into alleged H-1B fraud. Just the News detailed his statement that big corporations and overseas fraudsters use the program to undercut American wages in tech, health care, and education.
Vance, serving as the administration’s fraud czar, tied the visa abuse to broader labor scams. The Labor Department is also probing Permanent Labor Certification fraud and has issued dozens of subpoenas. Officials have linked some of the trafficking and foreign-labor schemes to cartels and transnational gangs.
In Milwaukee he put the wage harm front and center.
"Big corporations and fraudsters overseas are using this program to undercut the wages of American workers."
The New York Post reported the same joint push with the Labor Department inspector general. The goal is straightforward: American jobs go to American workers, not foreign fraudsters. Department of Homeland Security assessments have indicated that up to 21 percent of H-1B petitions were fraudulent. Investigators have found wage-kickback schemes, below-market labor flooding markets, and losses running into the hundreds of millions in the medical industry alone.
Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito connected the dots to violent crime.
"This is another example where fraud is fueling violent crime. Much of the visa and the human trafficking that we see when it comes to this foreign labor is tied to cartels, is tied to transnational gangs..."
Those findings match the pattern Vance described on Sunday: firms that cry shortage while shedding U.S. staff, then import replacements. The inspector general track record on labor-side misconduct has already drawn public attention in other cases, including prior IG scrutiny of Labor Department leadership.
Vance stressed what the White House can do without waiting on new statutes. The fee, the fraud probes, and rules that block H-1B users from large-scale American layoffs are all framed as executive levers. President Trump has publicly backed rebuilding support with workers before the November election, and the visa overhaul is part of that push.
The administration’s message is consistent: legal immigration that adds real skill is welcome; a pipeline that displaces U.S. graduates and undercuts wages is not. Vance has carried that line in multiple settings, including White House briefings where he has defended the administration’s priorities even amid internal disagreements.
Critics of reform often claim every H-1B hire is irreplaceable talent. The vice president’s examples cut the other way, accountants at a $15,000 pay cut, mass layoffs followed by visa petitions, and computer-science grads stuck at 26 percent underemployment while hundreds of thousands of contract visa holders fill similar roles.
Trump administration directives have repeatedly put American workers and national institutions first, from labor enforcement to cultural decisions such as orders reshaping public monuments. The H-1B changes follow the same logic: the system serves the country, not the other way around.
Open questions remain on the exact effective date of the full fee schedule and which specific employers will face the sharpest restrictions. What is already clear is the direction. Vance said the program should not exist to replace American workers. The fee, the fraud subpoenas, and the layoff safeguards are the tools now being used to make that statement stick.
American workers should not have to compete against a visa system rigged for cheaper substitutes. The White House is finally treating that as policy, not a talking point.