M. President, as we go forward in this new session of Congress, I hope that there will be a serious focus on the crises facing the working class of our country.

M. President, we are the wealthiest nation on Earth.

And yet today, while we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had, 60 percent of our people live paycheck to paycheck, the life expectancy for working people is far below that of other countries, 85 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured, some 800,000 Americans are homeless, 25% of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation on earth.

Further, we are the only wealthy country not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right.

Meanwhile, while working families struggle to put food on the table and pay their bills, the wealthiest people of our country have never ever had it so good.

That is not what America is supposed to be about.

There are a number of reasons why we are living in a nation today where the wealth of the billionaire class is exploding while working families struggle.

There are many causes as to why, despite a huge increase in worker productivity, real weekly wages for the average American worker are less today than they were over 50 years ago and why there has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1% since 1975.

A lot of those reasons have to do with disastrous trade policies which have resulted in the loss of many good paying jobs; the failure of the Congress to raise the minimum wage to a living wage; and aggressive and often illegal union busting activities on the part of major employers.

All of those and more are issues we have to deal with. But today I want to focus on another issue of extreme importance and that is the H-1B guest worker program.

Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of nearly $430 billion, and other multi-billionaires in the high-tech industry claim that the H-1B federal guest worker program is vital to our economy because of the scarcity of highly skilled engineers and other technology workers in the United States. In my view, they are dead wrong.

The main function of the H-1B program is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with hundreds of thousands of lower-paid guest workers from abroad who are often treated as indentured servants. The cheaper it is to hire guest workers, the more money the multi-billionaire owners of large corporations make.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 2022 and 2023, the top 30 companies using the H-1B program laid off 85,000 American workers, while simultaneously bringing in over 34,000 guest workers from abroad.

In 2019 and 2020, 85 percent of H-1B visas were awarded to entry-level and junior guest workers who are paid between 20 to 40 percent less than American workers in similar occupations.

Let me give you a few examples of how absurd the situation has become.

In Dallas, H-1B software developers are making $44,000 less than American workers doing the exact same job.

In Houston, H-1B accountants are paid nearly $40,000 less than American accountants doing the exact same work.

In Santa Barbara, California H-1B workers who are hired as computer system engineers make just $45,000 a year. The median wage for an American computer systems engineer is over $110,000 a year.

M. President, you tell me. Why would a corporation hire an American computer systems engineer at a salary of $110,000 a year when it is $65,000 cheaper to hire an H-1B worker for that same exact position?

M. President, if you want to know why multi-billionaire owners of high-tech companies love the H-1B program so much, that is why. They are using this program to substantially undercut the wages of American workers.

Moreover, M. President, there are estimates that as many as 33 percent of all new information technology jobs in America are being filled by guest workers.

And according to Census Bureau data, there are millions of Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math who are not currently employed in those professions.

Adding insult to injury, half of the top 30 H-1B employers are companies whose major function in life is to outsource jobs – known in the industry as “body shops.”

In other words, the same companies that are involved with supplying American companies with cheap foreign labor at home are precisely the same businesses that provide even cheaper labor to corporations when they move abroad. They are two sides of the same coin.

M. President, if there is truly a major shortage of skilled tech workers in this country, as Mr. Musk has argued, why did Tesla lay-off over 7,500 American workers last year – including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas – while applying to hire thousands of H-1B guest workers?

If these jobs are only going to “the best and brightest,” why has Tesla employed H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as little as $58,000, associate mechanical engineers for as little as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as $80,000 a year?

Now, M. President, I will admit. I am not a rocket scientist. But to my mind, those occupations don’t sound like highly specialized jobs that are primarily for the top one-tenth of one percent, as Mr. Musk claimed last month.

M. President, if this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as fashion models, lawyers, dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers?

Can we really not find English teachers in America?

Does anyone really believe that we don’t have enough lawyers in America? Really?

M. President, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the richest three people in America now own more wealth than the bottom half of our country and when the CEOs of major corporations make almost 300 times more than their average workers, we need fundamental changes in our economic policies.

We need an economy that works for all, not just the few.

One small, but very important way forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms to the H-1B program in order to benefit American workers.

That is why, M. President, I have filed an amendment to the Laken Riley bill that we are debating this week that will do just that.

Let me very briefly describe what this amendment would do.

First, this amendment would double the major H-1B fee that corporations pay before they can hire guest workers from abroad. This provision would generate over $370 million in revenue each year.

And what would this revenue be used for?

It would be used to provide nearly 20,000 scholarships each and every year for American students pursuing advanced degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and other fields vital to the competitiveness of our nation.

If the Members of this body truly believe we need H-1B visas in order to compensate for a shortage of skilled American professionals, this amendment will attract tens of thousands of America’s best and brightest to those fields.

Second, this amendment requires corporations to substantially increase wages for the jobs they need before they would be allowed to hire H-1B guest workers.

Specifically, this amendment would raise the prevailing wage for the H-1B program to at least the median local wage.

In other words, if the H-1B program is truly meant for “the best and the brightest,” it should not be used as a tool to undercut the wages of high-skilled American workers. That’s what this amendment will prevent.

Third, this amendment would prohibit corporations from replacing laid-off American workers with H-1B guest workers from overseas.

Corporations that are engaged in mass-layoffs should not be allowed to replace American workers with guest workers.

Finally, this amendment would prevent corporations from treating treat H-1B guest workers as indentured servants.

Under current law, H-1B guest workers are often locked into lower-paying jobs and can have their visas taken away from them by their corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair or illegal working conditions.

That is unacceptable and has got to change.

This amendment would make H-1B visas portable and give guest workers the ability to easily change jobs.

M. President, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and others have argued that we need a highly skilled and well-educated workforce. I agree.

The answer, however, is not to bring in cheap labor from abroad through the H-1B program.

The answer is to hire qualified American workers first and to make certain that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce that our country needs for the jobs of the future.

Bottom line: It must never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker at home.

That’s what this amendment is all about.

M. President: Let’s be clear. Thirty years ago, the leaders of corporate America, the political establishment in both major parties and the editorial boards of influential newspapers told us not to worry about the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that would come as a result of unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China (PNTR).

They promised that those lost jobs would be more than offset by the many good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs that would be created in the United States. I never believed that and helped lead the effort in Congress against those agreements.

Unfortunately, I, and the many others who opposed those trade deals, were proven correct.

NAFTA and PNTR cost us millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs as large corporations shut down thousands of factories in America and fled to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries in search of cheap labor.

And what about all of the great high-tech jobs that would be created? Well, that didn’t quite happen either. As a result of the H-1B guest worker program, major corporations are now importing hundreds of thousands of lower-paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar technology jobs that are available.
In other words, “Heads, billionaires win. Tails, American workers lose.”

In my view, we can and we must change that reality.

And a good place to start would be by passing this amendment and putting American workers first.

Multi-billionaires in Big Tech should not be allowed to hire guest workers to fill entry-level and mid-level Information Technology jobs.

Those jobs should be going to American workers who have the Constitutional right to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions.

M. President: I will be asking for a roll call vote on this amendment.

In my view, the time has come for the American people to know which side their Senators stand on this issue.

In order to accomplish that goal, I very much appreciated the statement that Majority Leader Thune gave on the floor of the Senate last November about the need for more amendment votes in the Senate.

Here is what the Majority Leader Thune said on November 14th with respect to the amendment process:

“All Members of the Senate — and not just the Members of a particular committee — should have a voice in final legislation through amendments on the floor. Members should assume that amendment votes will be the norm. That will mean taking tough votes at times, but that is part of our jobs.”

I could not agree more with the Majority Leader and I look forward to working with him and all of my Senate colleagues to receive a roll call vote on this amendment.

I thank the President. And I yield the floor.