A Republican presidential aspirant has said he is against increasing H-1B visas — the most sought-after work visas for IT professionals and companies the US.
A Republican presidential aspirant has said he is against increasing H-1B visas — the most sought-after work visas for IT professionals and companies the US.
Terming the increase a “huge mistake”, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said there are already a lot of Americans who are being displaced from the workforce.
“I’d love those Senators [to] tell me why they’d like to be president so we can ship more jobs to Mexico, China or Indonesia. I’d like to see a few more jobs here,” Mr Huckabee said in an interview with Breitbart News.
“Honestly, I don’t give a rat’s rear whether they get wealthy in China. I don’t care whether they make it in Mexico — but I doggone sure care that people make it in America,” he said.
Mr Huckabee referred to the displaced workers at Disney to demonstrate how increasing H-1B visas negatively impacts the American worker.
“Look at what happened to Disney. There were a bunch of high-tech Disney workers — excellent job performance — and not only were they replaced by foreign H-1B workers, but to add insult to injury, the Disney workers were required to train their foreign replacements. And if they didn’t, they would lose all their severance,” he said.
Claiming that H-1B visas import cheap labour but are taking jobs away from Americans, he alleged what happened to the Disney workers was because the work they brought in from the H-1B was not up to the quality of the people who are veteran Disney employees, but it was because it was cheap labour.
