White House defends Trump’s H-1B stance as “common sense”

The White House defended President Trump’s nuanced H-1B visa policy, allowing initial foreign hires to launch projects but prioritizing American workers long-term. Trump’s position has sparked debate among Republicans, amid legal challenges and opposition from business groups.

Washington: The White House defended US President Donald Trump’s views on the H-1B visas, saying that he has a “nuanced and common-sense opinion on this issue.”

While speaking to reporters, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump would allow importing foreign workers “just at the beginning,” but ultimately be replaced by American workers.

---

“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, but ultimately, the President always wants to see American workers in those jobs,” she added.

She noted that there has been “a lot of misunderstanding of the President’s position” on the issue, and Trump has conveyed to foreign companies that if they’re investing in the US, they “better be hiring my people.”

The White House statement comes days after Trump staunchly defended legal immigration, saying he would welcome “thousands of people” from abroad to train American workers in tech-related industries.

“You can’t come in, open up a massive computer chip factory for billions and billions of dollars like it’s being done in Arizona and think you’re going to hire people often from unemployment line to run it. They’re going to have to bring thousands of people with them. I am going to welcome those people,” Trump said during a speech at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington.

He added that the foreign workforce would “teach our people” to make “computer chips and other things.”

“You are coming here, and you find that we don’t have people that did that before. We are allowing you… if you have to bring people to get those plants open, we want you to do that. We want those people to teach our people – how to make computer chips and how to make other things,” he noted.

Trump acknowledged that he may “take a little heat” from his conservative base about his position on bringing in foreign workers.

The US President’s recent comments have sparked an intense debate with leading Republican and conservative leaders demanding the scrapping of the visa programme.

The White House had earlier clarified its position over the visa policy, telling IANS that the $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications is a “significant first step to stop abuses of the system.”

In an exclusive response to IANS, a White House spokesperson said that President Donald Trump has “done more than any president in modern history to tighten our immigration laws and put American workers first.”

“The $100,000 payment required to supplement new H1-B visa applications is a significant first step to stop abuses of the system and ensure American workers are no longer replaced by lower-paid foreign labor,” White House Spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told IANS.

The administration’s H-1B visa policy has faced broad opposition from lawmakers and legal challenges with two major lawsuits filed in courts, including one by the US Chamber of Commerce, the country’s biggest business organisation.

India-born workers received over 70 per cent of the total approved H1-B visas in 2024, primarily due to a huge backlog in approvals and a high number of skilled immigrants from India.