White House defends Trump on H1B
Washington: The White House defended US President Donald Trump's views on the H1B visas, saying that he has a “nuanced and commonsense opinion on this issue.”
While speaking to reporters, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump would allow importing foreign workers “just at the beginning,” but ultimately be replaced by American workers. “He wants to see if foreign companies are investing trillions of dollars in the United States of America, and they're bringing foreign workers with them to create very niche things like batteries. He wants to see that at the beginning, to get those manufacturing facilities and those factories up and running, but ultimately, the President always wants to see American workers in those jobs,” she added.
She noted that there has been “a lot of misunderstanding of the President's position” on the issue, and Trump has conveyed to foreign companies that if they're investing in the US, they “better be hiring my people.”
The White House statement comes days after Trump staunchly defended legal immigration, saying he would welcome “thousands of people” from abroad to train American workers in tech-related industries.
“You can't come in, open up a massive computer chip factory for billions and billions of dollars like it's being done in Arizona and think you're going to hire people often from unemployment line to run it. They're going to have to bring thousands of people with them. I am going to welcome those people,” Trump said during a speech at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington.
He added that the foreign workforce would “teach our people” to make “computer chips and other things.”
“You are coming here, and you find that we don't have people that did that before. We are allowing you… if you have to bring people to get those plants open, we want you to do that. We want those people to teach our people – how to make computer chips and how to make other things,” he noted.
Trump acknowledged that he may “take a little heat” from his conservative base about his position on bringing in foreign workers. The US President's recent comments have sparked an intense debate with leading Republican and conservative leaders demanding the scrapping of the visa programme.