'A firm got 6k visas, fired 16k Americans'

The White House has issued a fact sheet, justifying President Trump's move to impose an annual fee of $100,000 on HIB visa applications, citing concern over US workers being replaced with "lower-paid foreign labour".

- Agencies

The White House stated that the share of IT workers with HIB visas has risen from 32% in FY2003 to over 65% in recent years, highlighting the growing unemployment among the US citizens due to the H1B visas “abuse”.

"Unemployment among recent computer science graduates has reached 6.1% and 7.5% for computer engineering graduates -- more than double the rates for biology or art history majors. The number of foreign STEM workers in the US has more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, while overall STEM employment only increased 44.5% during that time," the fact sheet stated.