America's Talking - Legal immigration policy debate continues

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

As the Trump administration makes changes to visa programs and other political leaders call for further changes, the debate continues about how much legal immigration and what kind should be facilitated by visa programs. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Over the past five years, there's been tons of media attention paid to the border crisis and illegal immigration under former President Joe Biden. When at least 14 million non-citizens came to the U.S., many of them not vetted. And then, again, under President Donald Trump, who reversed most of Biden's open border policies and who instituted a mass deportation crackdown. but not near as much of attention has been paid to the need in some industries for foreign workers to fill many vital jobs in the U.S.

Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square reporter Andrew Rice. Andrew, over the past 12 weeks, you focused your reporting on this very issue. Of course, during that 12 weeks, President Donald Trump cracked down on the various visa programs in place to allow a certain number of foreign workers to come and work in the country, instilling much higher costs on various visas and limiting the number of foreign workers allowed to obtain them. Let's start with the various industries who say they need foreign workers because there are not enough Americans to fill the jobs. What is your reporting found, Andrew? Right. Well, my reporting over the past 12 weeks has found a lot of interesting things about where legal immigration is in this country and the industries that say they rely on it.

First of all, some of the main industries that rely on legal immigration or just immigrant labor in general are technology industries and science industries, even healthcare industries, seasonal agricultural worker industries, and even just temporary works, such as construction work or temporary landscaping work. A lot of these are really needed to be supplemented by immigrant labor. and currently the system that's in place right now throughout the United States in the federal government has some options to address these through different visa pathways. But a lot of advocates are saying that what is available right now is not enough. Well, tell us a little bit about these various visa programs that President Trump recently put new, either new restrictions on it, made it more difficult for an individual or companies to hire foreign workers, legally under the visa programs? Tell us a little bit about those. Exactly. Well, most recently, the biggest crackdown that President Trump has done is his crackdown on H-1B visas. Back in September,

he issued a proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee for new petitions for H-1B visas. Now, H-1B visas are specifically geared towards that technology sector. Like I mentioned earlier, though a lot of technology companies say that they need foreign workers who have more skills than American workers. to fill out their companies. Some of the biggest companies that petition most often for H1B visas every year are Amazon, Meta, Google, and Apple. Giant companies. Exactly.

These giant companies that really run a lot of what's going on around in our country. And so this crackdown saw a lot of panic in the markets and a lot of panic in these companies. And that's had ripple effects, really. And ever since President Trump implemented those, it's been a interesting tug of war between different political sides over how necessary these workers are. The fact that a lot of these companies really clearly value a lot of these workers. But the administration going after them has put a lot of political tension in this. In President Trump reasoning is essentially that these, my, workers, whether it's being, you know, something as sophisticated as the technology industry

or something, you know, a little less sophisticated as seasonal farm workers, that they're taking jobs away from Americans. But you're, you've been hearing differently from the various industries themselves. Is that correct? Yes, exactly. I've been hearing very different, a very different picture than what maybe President Trump has been putting forth about legal immigration. Specifically, been able to talk with some legal immigration advocates and current and former legal immigration lawyers. These are people that work on applications with foreign workers so that they can live and work in the United States in these temporary agricultural sectors, through these H-1B visas, in the technology sector, and across a wide variety here. And what I'm hearing from these

lawyers and from these advocates is that there are companies and industries, that sit with open job postings for months on end that don't end up getting filled. They have these job postings and they don't end up getting filled by American workers. And eventually, after waiting months and months, these employers have to transition and look elsewhere. And that's when they go to these immigration lawyers that help process these documents and help find them foreign workers to bring in and sponsor on temporary work visas so they can live and work in the United States. And so these companies can meet the needs that they have. In your reporting, Andrew, as you and I have talked about, virtually many, many of the sources

you've talked to over these last 12 weeks tell you that the U.S. immigration system is broken. It's outdated. It hasn't been updated in what years, decades maybe even. Just tell us a little about that in the minute that we have left. Absolutely. So a lot of the problems that advocates are saying, and people in this immigration space are saying that they have stem from the fact that many of the congressionally mandated quotas in these visa programs were set back in 1990, through the 1990 Immigration and Nationality Act. That sets the cap for H-1B visas at an absolute maximum of 85,000 per year. So that's where all these technology workers are coming from. And then there are, there's an unlimited amount in some of the less skilled.

visa programs. But a lot of workers and advocates are saying in these higher skilled programs, the fact that the Congress mandates these caps is really restrictive on some of these areas. Because a lot of the work, a lot of workers that are brought in, foreign workers that are brought in are living and contributing in places in the United States. They're working as physicians, as doctors and nurses even in places that American workers don't want to be. And that's a lot of what I've been hearing. And so that is one thing that's really restrictive. And over the past year, we've seen a lot of lawmakers.

And like we mentioned earlier, President Trump institute a lot of new policies, including new visas, expansion of visa programs, and some even calling for complete elimination of visas programs. So it's going to be a really interesting time to continue following and listening more about what legal immigration looks like in the future as this intense policy issue over, over, policy set back 30 years ago is being revised and possibly redrafted. Of course, the population has increased significantly since 1990. The number of jobs have increased significantly since 1990.

The technology sector in particular has exploded over the past three decades. Andrew, thank you for you. Thank you for your reporting on this. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com. Thank you.