PHILADELPHIA, PA. — Carly Fiorina thinks the foreign worker program used by Hewlett Packard and other companies in the past is something much different today than when she was running the tech giant.
The H1B visa program is under fire by some conservatives who say it allows for foreign workers to pilfer jobs from Americans. For years, companies defended the use of foreign labor through the H1B plan and even Fiorina fought for it as president of Hewlett Packard over a decade ago.
“There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore,” Fiorina said in 2004, when she and other tech executives defended their decisions to move company jobs overseas.
When asked by The Daily Caller on Friday if she was concerned that her critics may use these actions against her, she responded that the H1B visa program has changed greatly since she was at HP.
“The H1B Visa was very different 10 years ago than it is now. In some cases, there are legitimately positions that can only be filled with people who have a different set of skills, but it’s pretty clear that the H1B visa program is an issue,” she said.
”It’s become an issue, where people are using it as almost an industry. It’s become an issue where it appears that some companies that are abusing that program and asking American workers to train H1B visa replacements so they can lower wages. That’s a terrible thing. I would never defend that. And so, for those companies that are abusing that program, shame on them,” Fiorina continued.
Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions and Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin announced this week, that the Department of Labor is investigating alleged abuses of the H1B visa system by two companies, Both senators led a bipartisan group of members to call for an investigation into the matter.
“I think it illustrates yet again that we have to fix the legal immigration system. We have at least 16 different visa programs and we send the wrong people. We let the wrong people in. We’ve got to fix the legal immigration system. People have talked about it for 25 years,” Fiorina said.
Similar to her remarks in 2004, Fiorina wants to see the education system rebuilt in the United States.