Washington: In a candid statement that will bring some relief to Indian H-1B visa holders, US president Donald Trump has acknowledged that his country doesn’t have a sufficiently skilled workforce and needs to import specialised foreign talent to fill critical roles.
According to him, America does not possess sufficient talent to do away with foreign workers totally.
Defending the value of skilled immigrant workers, Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday that the US cannot simply repurpose long-term unemployed Americans for complex roles in manufacturing and defence without extensive training.
While he supports raising wages for American workers, the US must still “bring this talent” to maintain its industrial and technological edge, the US president said.
When asked whether H-1B visa reform would be a major priority for his administration, Trump said: “I agree, but you also have to bring this talent.”
When told during the interview that the US has “plenty of talented people,” the president said: “No, you don’t. There are certain skills you don’t have, and people have to learn them. You can’t take people off the unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.'”
In September this year, Trump signed a proclamation that triggered a major overhaul of the H-1B visa petition. According to this proclamation, there will now be a USD 100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications, a sharp increase from the previous level of about USD 1,500.
The US state department later clarified that the new fee requirement applies only to individuals or companies filing new H-1B petitions or entering the H-1B lottery after September 21.
Current visa holders and petitions submitted before that date remain unaffected. Under the proclamation, a USD 100,000 payment must accompany every new H-1B visa petition filed after the deadline, including those submitted for entries in the 2026 lottery.
Trump went on to cite an example from the state of Georgia, where, according to him, the removal of skilled foreign workers created difficulties in manufacturing complex products.
“They had people from South Korea who had made batteries all their life. Making batteries is very complicated and very dangerous — a lot of explosions, a lot of problems. They had like 500 or 600 people in the early stages to make batteries and to teach people how to do it,” he said.
He was referring to the raids conducted by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials at an under-construction Hyundai plant in the state of Georgia in September, during which hundreds of South Korean workers were arrested and deported.
The US president emphasised that such industries require specialised expertise that cannot be immediately filled by untrained or long-term unemployed workers.
“You can’t just say a country is coming in, going to invest USD 10 billion to build a plant, and take people off the unemployment line who haven’t worked in five years and they’re going to start making missiles. It doesn’t work that way,” he added.
His latest remarks are a notable shift from his earlier hardline stance on foreign worker visas, particularly the H-1B programme.
