Daniel Di Martino, Venezuela native and research associate at the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise, and Ryan Girdusky, co-author of “They’re Not Listening: How the Elites Created The National Populist Revolution,” joined the Daily Caller’s Samantha Renck to debate President Donald Trump’s recent executive order.
The executive order Trump signed on June 22 “will suspend H-1B visas, H-2B visas, certain J visas, and L visas.” The stated goal is to help protect the more than 40 million Americans who lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I agree with everyone that of course, American workers need jobs and that we’re in a terrible economic situation,” Di Martino said. “But the devil is in the details.”
Di Martino explained, “The issue is that President Trump’s additional action that he took earlier this month suspended H-1Bs, L-1s, suspended several categories of visas. J-1s, as well, H-2Bs, all these alphabet soup, is generally very highly skilled workers. Two-thirds of H-1bs [are] Ph.D.s and master’s degree-holders. These are college professors, physicians, and all the research indicates that these visas create more jobs. They don’t take jobs from Americans. That’s not how economics works.”
Girdusky countered Di Martino: “H-2B visas are not highly skilled workers at all and they were included in the suspension. Those are people who work at hotels and theme parks for the summer, many of which will probably be closed in many states so that’s a large chunk of those. Those are not skilled workers at all.”
Girdusky also discussed how companies like Disney recently “fired 250 American IT workers, replaced them with H-1B workers,” and the fired workers “were forced in their contract to train their H-1B [employees], or they would not receive their severance pay.”
Di Martino agreed “that there are things that need to change to make the system more merit-based.”
He argued, “however, the research is very clear, and there’s a huge consensus in the economics profession that high-skilled workers create jobs, they don’t take them from Americans. In fact, the jobs that are created by people who come on H-1B visas are for low-skilled workers. If you support blue-collared jobs, if you support construction, if you support manufacturing, you need companies like Google, like Amazon to bring more engineers so that they can demand more services from them.”
Di Martino and Girdusky continued by pinpointing ways the executive order will impact Americans and immigrants both positively and negatively, economic implications and more. (RELATED: Biden Says Trump’s New Immigration Order Is An ‘Attempt To Distract’ From Coronavirus ‘Failure’)
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