WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - National Security Matters: Visas and Immigration

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

This week, Malia Thibado compares two popular visa programs, H-1B and H-2A, in context of how immigration benefits and harms American industries. 

Hello and welcome to National Security Matters. This year we discuss anything and everything related to U.S. international relations and defense policy. I'm your host, Malia Tibodeau. Let's talk about foreign-born workers in American visas. So the distribution of immigrants in America is actually bimodal. You'll either find unskilled slash minimum wage workers or on the complete other end, highly educated and specialized ones. First, I want to focus on the unskilled laborers.

America is increasingly becoming a service-based, highly educated country. Citizens will balk at the idea of menial labor. That's where the low-skilled foreign workers come in, especially in the agriculture industry, which has been on a decades-long labor shortage due to urbanization and existing farmers aging. And so to keep their farms running, these farmers will employ migrant workers.

A popular option for that right now is the H2A visa program. It's a program for seasonal guest workers who come to America for a season and then return home. In farms, they'll come for the harvest season and then return back to their country for their country's harvest season. They receive U.S. wages, so they aren't out competing Americans with wage expectations. it's actually more expensive to hire them due to housing and travel costs. I believe this is an effective solution to the U.S. worker shortage. It gives foreigners the opportunities to work while experiencing and appreciating our culture. The big problem with migrant workers is just illegal immigration.

So according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics publication, Ag Jobs decreased by 150,000, 35,000 since March when ICE began farm raids. Illegal immigrants can outcompete American workers by asking for lower wages and having less legal or social leverage against their employers due to their status. On the opposite end of the immigration distribution are the highly educated overseas students and workers who hold H-1B visas. According to a White House publication, quote, among computer and math occupations, the foreign share of the workforce grew from 17.7% in 2000 to 26.1% in 2019. The statement also provided another statistic,

which claims college graduates with computer science and engineering degrees are facing 6.1 and 7.5% unemployment rate, where the national average is for. A key difference between this situation and that of the unskilled labors is what I'd previously highlighted. The U.S. is only becoming a more service-based economy. Overseas students and workers see that, and they see these opportunities, and they come here looking for jobs. They add competition in sectors where there's already fierce domestic rivalry. Companies will hire H-1B workers in, quote, entry-level positions,

where they can pay the workers far less than Americans with the same experience level, thus out-competing American wages and forcing an artificial oversaturation of high-skill industries. Trump just announced a $100,000 fee for H-1B employers. I can't say more because of some mixed signaling that the White House has had on it, but we know for sure it will raise costs for employing oversawks. workers instead of Americans in high-skilled labor jobs. The difference between the H-2A and the H-1B visas is market. H-2A workers are filling labor gaps.

H-1B holders are entering into an American-rich environment that should hire Americans first for economic prosperity, betterment of our workers' technical skills, and to negate potential national security risks. Thank you for listening to National Security Matters. with Malia Tibbetow on WRFH, Redoo Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.