Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he’d like to see the government’s H-1B visa killed completely, complaining the program widely used in the tech and engineering sectors was “defrauding” American workers.
Vance’s comments, made to right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec aboard Air Force Two, represent a clear line in the sand from the 2028 presidential hopeful. It’s a nearly definitive stance on an issue fracturing the right, placing its Silicon Valley allies on one side of an issue against a restless and anti-immigrant group of right-wing media figures.
“My belief on this is the H-1B program has been totally taken advantage of, not just by technology companies, by accounting firms, by people who are basically defrauding the American worker,” Vance said Thursday in a livestream interview broadcast by Real America’s Voice.
The H-1B visa program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers for specialized, skilled jobs. Recipients must have the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree related to the field in which they hope to work — typically technology, healthcare or engineering. H-1B visas last for a period of three years but can be extended to as many as six.
Some Republicans and conservatives have said that the program effectively incentivizes U.S. companies to hire cheaper foreign labor for skilled jobs that could otherwise be done by Americans. And the Trump administration has already made an effort to clamp down on how many H-1B visas are approved, issuing an executive proclamation last year that implemented a $100,000 fee for certain applicants.
But Vance indicated that the policy didn’t go far enough.
“My view is, the H-1B program is completely broken, and I’d be very supportive of just eliminating it,” he told Posobiec. “But while we have it, what we have to do is protect American workers.”
Still, the vice president defended Trump’s record on the H-1B issue, pointing out that the $100,000 fee scheme emerged from conversations between him, the president and senior White House adviser Stephen Miller after they concluded Congress would not act to “reform” the program.
“The thinking there was, if you’re just trying to replace an American accountant with a cheaper foreign accountant, then you’re not going to pay $100,000,” said Vance. “The idea, in other words, was to use that fee as a kind of gateway in order to ensure that people actually were using the program for what it was intended for.”
Though the right’s more immigrant-critical contingent has repeatedly called for the end of the H-1B program, they’ve clashed on the issue in recent years with prominent conservatives in the tech industry who have defended the visas as a way to fill critical gaps in the American labor market.
Both Elon Musk and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy caught heat from the right in 2024 for backing H-1Bs. Musk said at the time that the U.S. suffers from a lack of “supertalented” engineers and that American industry benefits from the influx of skilled foreign workers. He’s largely maintained that stance, though he’s acknowledged that outsourcing firms can “game” the visa system.
Ramaswamy, for his part, was raked over the coals for a 2024 social media post in which he wrote that tech companies hire foreign-born workers over Americans because U.S. culture “has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”
“If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve,” he said.
Speaking aboard Air Force Two Thursday, Vance said he understood why people were angry about H-1B visas but insisted the Trump administration had done more to clamp down on the program than any other White House in history.
“I understand people are annoyed,” he said. “What I would say is, tell your congressman to fix this program. Meanwhile, we in the Trump administration are trying to at least make it less fraudulent.”
Asked whether Trump would consider ending the H-1B program entirely, a White House spokesperson referred HuffPost to Vance’s press team. A spokesperson for the vice president did not immediately return a request for comment.
Meanwhile, a federal judge on Thursday blocked U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from rolling out Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B applicants. It’s the second time in four months a court has struck down the White House action.