MAGA Rift: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Bill to End H-1B Program Versus Trump’s Defense of Skilled Worker Visas
- It remains unclear whether Greene's bill will gain traction in Congress or whether Trump's administration will further modify H-1B policies. What is clear is that the issue has become one of the defining controversies of Trump’s second term.
Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene announced Thursday she will introduce legislation to eliminate the H-1B visa program, directly challenging President Donald Trump’s recent defense of the controversial system that allows U.S. companies to hire foreign workers in specialized occupations.
The move comes just days after Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the United States lacks workers with “certain talents” needed for advanced manufacturing and technology jobs.
Greene said in a post on X that she is introducing a bill to “END the mass replacement of American workers by aggressively phasing out the H-1B program.”
“Big Tech, AI giants, hospitals, and industries across the board have abused the H-1B system to cut out our own people,” she wrote.
The Georgia congresswoman’s bill would completely eliminate the H-1B program with one temporary exception: allowing up to 10,000 visas annually for medical professionals such as doctors and nurses, The Hill reported. Even this medical exemption would be phased out over 10 years, according to multiple outlets.
The legislation would also remove any pathway from H-1B status to permanent residency or citizenship, forcing visa holders to return home when their visas expire. Greene said in a video posted to X that the bill would “restore the original intent of the visa: for it to be temporary.”
“Americans are the most talented people in the world, and I have full faith in the American people,” Greene said, adding, “If we want the next generation to have the American Dream, we must stop replacing them and start investing in them.”
Greene also proposed barring Medicare-funded residency programs from accepting non-citizen medical students, arguing that taxpayer dollars should support American trainees first. She cited 2024 figures showing more than 9,000 U.S. medical school graduates were unable to secure residency placements while more than 5,000 foreign-born doctors matched into residency programs in 2023.
Trump’s Defense and MAGA Backlash
Greene’s bill comes in direct response to Trump’s comments during a Fox News interview that aired Tuesday night, in which the president defended the H-1B program.
When Ingraham pressed Trump on whether his administration would prioritize H-1B visas, arguing that “if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers,” Trump responded: “I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent.”
“We have plenty of talented people here,” Ingraham countered.
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh wrote on X: “Even if it were true that we don’t have enough talented people in this country, which it isn’t, that would be all the more reason to stop importing foreigners. We need to train up our own people.”
“No, you don’t, no you don’t … you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn,” Trump replied. “You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.’ It doesn’t work that way.”
The president’s remarks sparked swift backlash from prominent figures in the MAGA movement. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh wrote on X: “Even if it were true that we don’t have enough talented people in this country, which it isn’t, that would be all the more reason to stop importing foreigners. We need to train up our own people.”
Matt Morse, who described himself as “one of the largest pro-Trump commentators in the nation,” wrote on X: “I’m absolutely f**king beyond PISSED OFF that tonight, as a justification for H-1B visas, Trump said that Americans don’t ‘have talent.’ Absolutely unreal.”
Podcaster Mike Cernovich said Trump “broke everyone’s heart with this line about the American workforce and H-1Bs,” according to HuffPost.
Anthony Sabatini, a Republican county commissioner in Florida, warned on X: “This is insane—we are going to lose the mid-terms so badly. We’ve never seen an administration crash & burn in its first year so badly—for no reason other than to appease donors & special interests.”
Trump’s Shifting Positions
Trump’s current support for H-1B visas represents a reversal from his previous positions on the program. In 2020, he temporarily suspended the program via executive order, and he has previously called the visas “very bad” and “unfair” to U.S. workers.
However, Trump told the New York Post in December 2024: “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
In September 2025, Trump signed an executive action imposing a $100,000 application fee for each new H-1B visa petition, marking what his administration described as a crackdown on “systemic abuse” of the program. The White House proclamation cited examples of companies laying off thousands of American workers while being approved for thousands of H-1B workers, according to the White House website.
The proclamation stated: “One software company was approved for over 5,000 H-1B workers in FY 2025; around the same time, it announced a series of layoffs totaling more than 15,000 employees,” the White House said. “American IT workers have reported they were forced to train the foreign workers who were taking their jobs and to sign nondisclosure agreements about this indignity as a condition of receiving any form of severance.”
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Hill Friday that Trump “has done more than any president in modern history to tighten our immigration laws and put American workers first.”
“The Trump administration is protecting American workers by restoring accountability in the H1-B process and ensuring that it is used to bring in only the highest-skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations — not low wage workers that will displace Americans,” Rogers said, according to The Hill.
The H-1B Program: Background and Current Use
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant work visa that allows U.S. companies to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations for an initial period of three years, which can be extended to six years, according to Fox News. The program was created by Congress in the Immigration Act of 1990.
The U.S. grants 65,000 H-1B visas annually, with an additional 20,000 reserved for workers with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions. Currently, more than 70% of H-1B visa holders are Indian nationals, making the program especially crucial for Indian professionals seeking work in the U.S.
Arguments Against H-1B Visas
Critics of the H-1B program argue that it displaces American workers and depresses wages. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, released a statement in January 2025 calling for major reforms to the program.
“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 said, according to his Senate website. “In 2022 and 2023, the top 30 corporations using this program laid off at least 85,000 American workers while they hired over 34,000 new H-1B guest workers.”
Sanders pointed to Tesla as an example, noting the company laid off over 7,500 American workers in 2025 “including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas — while being approved to employ thousands of H-1B guest workers,” his statement said.
Ken Cuccinelli, who served as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security in Trump’s first administration, said Thursday on Ingraham’s show that Congress for decades had used the H-1B to favor big technology companies over American workers. “It’s been very detrimental to America and Americans,” Cuccinelli said, according to the Mercury News.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wrote on X in September that “the H1-b visa program is a scam,” according to Newsweek.
According to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York cited in the White House proclamation, “among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively — more than double the unemployment rates of recent biology and art history graduates.”
Arguments Supporting H-1B Visas
Supporters of the H-1B program argue it is essential for U.S. economic competitiveness, particularly in technology and research sectors.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reportedly came to the U.S. on an H-1B visa himself, wrote on X that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low” and pledged to “go to war” in support of the program. Musk has said, “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B,” Fox News reported.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate who has been picked to work alongside Musk on a government efficiency board, has criticized the programme as “badly broken” but does not support removing visas completely, instead saying they should be granted on merit.
However, Ramaswamy antagonized hardline anti-immigration Trump supporters after he posted on social media that tech companies hired immigrants because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sued the Trump administration to stop implementation of the $100,000 application requirement, arguing it would “make it cost-prohibitive for U.S.” companies to hire skilled foreign workers, Fox News reported.
Personal Impact on Visa Holders
For H-1B visa holders themselves, the debate has been deeply personal. Madhav Rao Pasumarti, 49, who holds an H-1B visa and works in IT in Missouri, told NBC News in January that he and others have been called “invaders” and “cheap labor.”
“Those words are really kind of concerning, actually,” Pasumarti said, according to NBC. “It is confusing, actually, to be frank with you,” he added, pointing out the whiplash between recent messaging that focuses on embracing immigrants with specialty skills.
An Indian-American writer noted in Fortune magazine that “my X stream is flooded with venomous rhetoric, blatant misinformation, and outright racist attacks. The animosity doesn’t stop at immigration or employment—it extends to my religion, Hinduism, which is often misrepresented, mocked, or vilified.”
The writer acknowledged that “criticisms of the H-1B program are not without merit” and noted that “many employers exploit it to underpay workers and sideline American talent. For visa holders, the system often feels like modern indentured servitude—trapping them in restrictive backlogs and limiting their ability to change jobs or plan their futures.”
Bipartisan Reform Proposals
In September 2025, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the bipartisan H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2025, which would raise wage standards for H-1B workers, cap the share of H-1B employees at no more than 50% of an employer’s workforce, require additional recruitment steps before hiring foreign workers, and boost government oversight and penalties for abuse.
Political Implications
The H-1B debate has exposed a significant rift within the Republican Party between business-oriented Republicans who support skilled immigration and populist conservatives who prioritize job protection for American workers.
Trump himself appears caught between these factions. In his Fox News interview, when the controversy over Greene’s criticism of the White House came up, Trump said: “I don’t know what happened to Marjorie, nice woman. She’s lost her way, I think.”
Greene defended herself earlier this week, telling The Hill in a statement that she is “100% America first and only!”
MSNBC noted that “the infighting could inform the next four years of Trump’s presidency, with Musk already warning of a ‘MAGA civil war’ over the issue.”
As the debate continues, it remains unclear whether Greene’s bill will gain traction in Congress or whether Trump’s administration will further modify H-1B policies. What is clear is that the issue has become one of the defining early controversies of Trump’s second term, with implications for both Republican unity and the future of skilled immigration to the United States.
This story, conceptualized and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk, was aggregated by AI from several news reports.