Last month, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy ignited a national debate with their support for the H1-B visa program, which they claim is critical to driving U.S. innovation and industry forward. While Silicon Valley employs the majority of H1-B workers, they can be found throughout the country—the state of Florida is top ten in the nation for their use of H1-B visa workers.
Ramaswamy alleged fundamental issues within the U.S. workforce. Musk, who uses the H1-B program to hire workers for Tesla, argued that “if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be.” With the tech industry poised to play a key role in rebuilding the economy, Musk and others claim that accomplishing this means recruiting the best and the brightest.
Critics of the H1-B visas accuse the program and its proponents of taking jobs away from Americans by incentivizing companies to hire cheap overseas labor. Increasing H1-B visas would mean taking more jobs away from American workers. Former Senator Nikki Haley responded to Musk: “Invest in our American workforce. We must invest in Americans first before looking elsewhere.” And Laura Loomer, a far right MAGA influencer, even claimed that the visas were being given to “third-world invaders from India.”
President Donald Trump issued a statement endorsing Musk’s position on H1-B visas—a program he previously spoke out against.
The state of Florida ranks tenth in the nation in the use of H1-B visa workers with 14,093 visas given out. The average annual salary for those workers is $111,233. The total for 2024 was 17,344 H1-B visas, who had an average annual salary of $111,830. Tallahassee accounted for 443 of those visas with an average annual salary of $89,893.
Florida’s public universities are among the highest users of H1-B visas in the state. In 2023, the University of Florida topped the charts with 252 visas followed by the University of Miami, who took 116. Florida State University took 88 visas, while Florida A&M accounted for 9.
If an H1-B visa-holder is looking for work, they typically use a sponsor company as a go-between. These companies connect workers with government entities. State departments like DOE or FDOT will post job applications, and a recruiting company will bid on the contracts. If they win, then they can connect one of their H1-B visa workers with the State for an interview. This is a common practice throughout the country.
One big criticism of the H1-B visa program is that it offers foreign labor as a cheap alternative to hiring American workers. A recruiting company may charge the State $100+ an hour for their H1-B talent and only pay their workers $15-30 an hour. The difference is pure profit for the recruiting company. In some instances, these sponsor companies will invest the surplus money into housing for their workers.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has come out strongly against the visas. “We’ve seen how companies will bring in H-1B [workers], the Americans train the H-1B [workers], and then they fire the Americans and hire the H-1B,” said DeSantis. “How would that even remotely be acceptable?”
If DeSantis is truly concerned about the use of H1-B visas, he could start by examining their impact in the capital of his own state.
An earlier version of this article mistakenly identified a technology solutions company while giving a hypothetical example of a typical H1B recruiting company. That company’s name has been removed.
H1-B Visa Debate Relevant in Tallahassee added by Samuel Schaefer on
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America does NOT need H1-B workers, American workers do NOT want H1-B workers. As an IT professional I will tell you that there are more than enough Americans to fill all the IT jobs available and most are more intelligent and harder working than the visa workers. Does anyone remember when the IT staff at Disney were forced to train their H1-B replacements? I worked in the Ft. Lauderdale area in the mid 2000s and remember how excited we were to learn American Express was building a large facility for their IT workers but then found out it was to be staffed 100% by H1-B workers?
Point is most work visa programs disadvantage American workers and need to be discontinued or modified so the program is only used when a business absolutely cannot find enough American workers for it’s needs. I would suggest the following:
– a 1 year limit on the visa after which the worker must return to their native country for a minimum of 3 years before returning to the U.S.
– no spouses or other family members can accompany the worker
– the company must pay a penalty tax equal to the wage paid to the worker not the contracting company they are hired through, every year
– the worker must pay income taxes
– the H1-B worker must be paid 150% of the national wage scale for the job they are hired for
– H1-B workers cannot be awarded legal resident status, ever
It’s well past time to put American workers first, shame on any company that hires foreign workers, legally or not.
Florida taxpayer money should be spent on funding jobs for Floridians!
This analysis provides insights into the problem. My question is, if we stop the program, do we have enough “brainpower” locally, to replace these folks who are working here now on the H1-B visas? Secondly, are local training programs available to replace these “consultants” in the future?
“If DeSantis is truly concerned about the use of H1-B visas, he could start by examining their impact in the capital of his own state.”
That’s funny right there, I recently said pretty much the same thing about TIK-TOK. Biden was dead set on Banning TIK-TOK because it is Spying on the US. That is TRUE, BUT……. if TIK-TOK is so Evil, WHY is our Government, including BIDEN on it and using it? Just like this, if H1-B Visa’s are that bad for the US, why does our Government Hire Workers with H1-B Visa’s?
The local IT market is dominated by “consultants” used by state government as staff augmentation. They do not have to pay for benefits or paid holidays for these individuals who are on contract through consulting companies specializing in importing cheaper labor to suppress IT wages in the capital. Our IT market has historically paid far less than industry average and that isn’t because IT needs are limited. The staff for most agencies is now centralized under the Department of Management Services, but that’s only for Tallahassee. Each agency’s district, or regional, offices maintains their own independent IT staff…including yet more staff augmentation.
State employees even experienced the joys of having their social security information shared in a breach thanks to the use of an off-shore company in India.
The entire system of H1-B visas is riddled with fraud and abuse beyond just market wide wage suppression. Many of these visa holders are in the country and basically being trafficked by their employer. There was recently a story about a week ago on WFSU about the practice and how one man came here to free himself from his employer’s extorsion and abuse.