Train us and then go home: US Treasury Secretary
Scott Bessent says Trump’s new H1B visa policy is designed to temporarily bring in skilled foreign experts to train American workers but not to replace them. He describes the plan as a “knowledge transfer” strategy designed to rebuild US manufacturing, shipbuilding, and semiconductor production
Washington: A day after US President Donald Trump defended the H1B visa programme, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the “vision” is to bring in skilled overseas workers who train Americans and then go back home. “The President's vision here is to bring in overseas workers, where these jobs went, who have the skills. Three, five, seven years to train the US workers, then they can go home. The US workers fully take over,” Bessent said in an interview to Fox News on Wednesday.
Bessent was asked about Trump’s latest remarks on the H1B visa programme, where the President said America has to bring in talent since it does not have "certain talents". Bessent said that for 20-30 years, the US has offshored precision manufacturing jobs. “And the President's point here is, again, we can't snap our fingers and say, ‘You're going to learn how to build ships overnight’. We want to bring the semiconductor industry back to the US.” “So, this idea of overseas partners coming in, teaching American workers, then returning home, that's a home run,” Bessent said, adding that Americans can't have those jobs now because “we haven't built ships in the US for years, we haven't built semiconductors."
Trump defended the H1B visa programme, saying America has to bring in talent from around the world. “I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent,” Trump had said in an interview to Laura Ingraham on Fox News. Trump was responding to a question on whether the H1B visa issue will not be a big priority for his administration, and if one wants to raise wages for American workers, the country cannot be flooded with hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.
When Ingraham noted that "we have plenty of talent”, Trump said “No, you don’t, no you don’t. You don’t have certain talents. And people have to learn. You can't take people off an unemployment line, and say, ‘I'm going to put you into a factory, we're going to make missiles’,” Trump had said.
“In Georgia, they raided because they wanted illegal immigrants. They had people from South Korea that made batteries all their lives. You know, making batteries (is) very complicated. It's not an easy thing, and very dangerous. A lot of explosions, lot of problems. They had, like 500-600 people, early stages to make batteries and to teach people how to do it. Well, they wanted them to get out of the country.
You're going to need that…I mean, I know you and I disagree on this. You can't just say a country is coming in, going to invest $10 billion to build a plant and going to take people off an unemployment line who haven't worked in five years, and they're going to start making missiles. It doesn't work that way.”
The Trump administration has launched a massive crackdown to check abuse in the H1B visa programme which is used by companies, particularly technology companies, to employ foreign workers in the US. Indian professionals, including technology workers and physicians, are among the largest cohort of H-1B visa holders.