Bernie Sanders is the leader of the socialist left.
But Sanders just pulled a 180.
And Bernie Sanders surprised Donald Trump by picking one fight.
The discourse regarding the H-1B visa program has come hot and heavy in recent days.
The program – which allows up to 60,000 new work visas to be issued every year for skilled foreign engineers and other foreign workers – has been loudly defended by heavyweight “tech bros” Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Musk and tech companies argue the H-1B program, while taking away jobs from Americans in the tech field, allows foreign innovation and talent to contribute to the advancement of the American economy.
“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk said in a post on X.
But critics – and the people who voted for Trump in an overwhelming rebuke to Biden’s wide-open borders and endless immigration policies – contend these companies abuse the program since it allows them to outsource cheap foreign labor instead of paying an American worker’s salary.
Surprisingly, self-avowed socialist and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders agrees and said H-1B “replace[s] good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad.”
“The main function of the H-1B visa program and other guest worker initiatives is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad,” Sanders wrote in a statement on X on Thursday.
“The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”
Sanders went on to say the visas should be granted as a “short-term and temporary approach” to labor shortages.
“Bottom line. It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker,” Sanders wrote.
Another surprising critic of H-1B is California Democrat Representative Ro Khanna who told Newsweek:
“America is a magnet for the world’s brightest talent. To compete with China, we want to attract the best engineers and technologists. But the H-1B program has been abused. That’s why I have been co-leading the bipartisan H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act to make sure American workers are never replaced and that H-1B workers aren’t paid below market wages that hurts the compensation of American employees.”
The debate over the program first kicked off when conservative commentator Laura Loomer vocally disapproved of Trump’s decision to appoint Sriram Krishnan – a well-known supporter of H-1B visas – as an advisor on AI intelligence in his administration.
CBS reports: “Loomer declared the stance to be ‘not America First policy’ and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves.”
“Loomer’s comments sparked a back-and-forth with venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, whom Trump has tapped to be the ‘White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.’ Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government, defended the tech industry’s need to bring in foreign workers.”
In 2020, Trump’s administration required employers to pay H-1B employees higher wages in hopes of discouraging companies from hiring cheaper foreign labor.