Don Surber
Trump makes a move on H-1B visas
Trump’s Stephen Miller told Fox:
What they don’t teach you in school is that from 1920 to 1970, there was NEGATIVE migration. There was a half century of negative migration. The foreign born population declined by 40% for half a century.
During that same time period, the U.S. population doubled from natural childbirth.
That was the cauldron in which a unified shared national identity was formed. They went through a depression together. They went through world wars together.
They landed on the moon together. This great period in American history happened at a time when there was negative migration! They don’t teach that to our kids in school.
Oh they teach it, but teach it as a racist approach to immigration. How dare Americans only want people similar to them!
The Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas for legal immigrants with the goal of keeping the ethnic mix the same as it was in the Gilded Age. America became a melting pot where people assimilated and as Miller said, the nation united.
41 years later, Lyndon Johnson and Ted Kennedy lifted the lid on immigration and replaced the melting pot with the salad bowl in which people kept their national identity but collected American welfare. The Marxists dumped united we stand, replacing it with the inane chant of diversity is our strength—while at the same time denouncing braiding your hair or eating noodles as cultural appropriation.
The colonization of Europe by Third Worlders is unlikely to end happily. The United States has chosen to fight back.
Trump shut down the border and resumed building the wall. ICE is deporting scads of illegal aliens—more than a half-million so far this year—while encouraging self-deportations. Since Trump returned to power, the illegal population is down by at least 2 million and counting.
But what about H-1B visas that allow companies to replace American workers with foreigners? Trump seemed to sell out to the tech moguls by not touching the issue.
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Well, my friends, there is good news. President Trump is adding social media screening to the application process which will delay the issuance of new H-1B visas for months. The Independent reported:
Panic and confusion has gripped hundreds of US H-1B visa applicants in India after the Trump administration rolled out new rules requiring them to submit their social media for vetting.
Applicants have received abrupt emails from American consulates informing that their interviews stood scrapped or pushed likely into next year.
The new rules mark the latest setback for Indian H-1B visa holders, who constitute over 70% of all recipients. Mr. Trump previously imposed a series of stringent restrictions on the H-1B program as part of his America First agenda. The changes, introduced gradually over the past year, disproportionately hit Indian migrants who formed the largest cohort of skilled workers entering the North American on H-1B visas.
It did not disproportionately his Indian migrants. It hit everyone the same. What was disproportionate was India’s use of this program. The Independent’s story ended:
The Trump administration earlier this year hiked H-1B visa fees to $100,000 for new applicants.
This came after the U.S. deported hundreds of Indians, living illegally in the country or with expired visas, as part of Mr. Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration.
Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar told the parliament last week that Washington had deported 3,258 Indian nationals since January.
This move is not as sudden as it appears.
The Economic Times reported:
The U.S. government introduced new H-1B modernization rules in early 2025 that redefined specialty occupations, tightened degree relevance criteria, and strengthened compliance expectations for employers. These updates have raised the scrutiny level for new petitions, affecting companies that traditionally relied on high-volume filings.
A significant development followed in September 2025 with the announcement of a one-time $100,000 fee for all new H-1B petitions. Although continuing-employment petitions are exempt, the additional cost has added a new layer of uncertainty for firms sponsoring new workers. For many Indian IT companies, this fee is expected to influence future hiring and onsite deployment strategies.
These overlapping changes have intensified industry discussions in the US and India. Immigration attorneys, technology firms, and visa applicants have raised concerns about the combined impact of higher costs, stricter occupational definitions, and broader scrutiny. Together, these shifts suggest a long-term recalibration in how employers approach H-1B recruitment and workforce planning.
One of the oddest takes on Trump’s H-1B crack down came from Qian Zhang, a Chinese executive who worked in America using an H-1B visa.
In October, she told CNBC, “The H-1B made me feel like a second-class citizen.”
She should not feel that way at all because she is not a citizen—second-class or otherwise. She moved on to Portugal. Good. Let her pretend to be a citizen there.
Tighter scrutiny is not limited to H-1B visas. Ahead of next year’s soccer world championships, CNBC reported:
The U.S. is planning to impose social media inspections on some tourists as President Donald Trump continues to ramp up travel restrictions for foreign visitors.
Tourists—including those from Britain, Australia, France, and Japan—will be mandated to provide five years of their social media history as part of their applications to visit the U.S., according to a notice posted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, on Wednesday. The proposal, which has been given a 60 day-notice with requests for comments from the public, is not final and may see some revisions.
Tourists from nations that are included in the U.S.' Visa Waiver Program can apply to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, to visit the country for 90 days or less, with a fee of $40. The social media check will now form a “mandatory data element” as part of the ESTA application.
May I also suggest pregnancy tests too? No more birth tourism, please.
Court rulings have made doing these social media reviews necessary because judges won’t allow the Trump administration to kick out anti-Semitic and even anti-American visa holders.
This is our country. We will decide who we let in. Communists, jihadists and loafers need not apply. |
