H1B visas have long been a tool for giving Americans' jobs and university positions to foreigners from hostile countries. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says that ends now at his state’s universities.
DeSantis is confident he can eliminate the controversial visa program for his state’s universities, and has already told the Florida Board of Governors to take action accordingly. This follows an investigation in which DeSantis said they discovered multiple professors from China and an assistant swim coach from Spain at Florida universities. Other employees came from Canada, Trinidad, Albania, Poland, and the UK.
DeSantis: “I am directing today the FL Board of Governors to pull the plug on the use of these H1B visas in our universities. We can do it with our residents of Florida and with Americans.” pic.twitter.com/fJlUrYxqIh
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) October 29, 2025
DeSantis, speaking at the University of South Florida, angrily declared, “It turns out these tech companies will fire Americans and hire H1B at a discount and they are basically indentured servants because they go in and they are almost all from one country.” The majority of the visas go to Indians, with Chinese coming in second.
The governor noted in his speech that there is more than one type of visa for foreigners to come work — and study — here, but that H1B in particular is awful for the USA. “They come in with these brokers who make a fortune of this with arbitrage. They bring them in and they are indentured to the company. So, the company can basically pay them low and they say no, we got to do this. You have to prove there are no Americans. They will put an ad in the classified sections of a newspaper. Nobody reads that section of the newspaper… It’s all become a total scam,” DeSantis exclaimed.
As Gov. DeSantis announced he is directing the Florida Board of Governors to "pull the plug" on the use of H-1B visas in state universities, he listed out some of the positions they found filled by foreign nationals
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) October 29, 2025
"Why do we need to bring someone China to talk about public… pic.twitter.com/QaGkiKXt7q
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Listing off some of the positions at universities in Florida that foreigners have filled, DeSantis said, “I don’t understand how is that specialized knowledge that only someone from these places can do. A $40,000 a year job working as the assistant at the athletic department? That’s an abuse of this whole idea. If there are things that the universities need, that somehow they just can’t find in Florida, to me, they, of all employers, would be the ones most responsible for why they can’t find what they need.”
If our universities are graduating students who can’t learn basic job skills, we have an issue. “We’re churning out a lot of people,” DeSantis emphasized. “This should not be that difficult to do…This is basically, in some respects, cheap labor that they are bringing in to try to save money.” Which is absolutely true. The H1B visa program is all about American employers saving money with cheaper foreign labor.
I am certainly not opposed to allowing some foreigners to work at or attend American universities — in fact, one of my good friends in college was from China, and one of my best professors from Australia — but the H1B visa system is corrupt and essentially functions as a way for numerous citizens from certain Asian countries to come to America with many job slots specifically reserved for them. And unfortunately, that doesn’t dramatically change with Donald Trump‘s decision to require $100,000 for every H1B visa, because that simply ensures that Chinese and Indian governments and companies will continue to pay the price for their people to come over, while more deserving foreign candidates miss out.
The H-1B program exists to bring workers specifically from India and China:
— August Takala (@RudyTakala) August 21, 2025
• 283,397 Indians in 2024
• 46,680 Chinese
• Philippines came in at #3 — with 5,248
They seem to be telling us that talent doesn't exist in any country except for India... and sometimes China. pic.twitter.com/irbOErtkWt
Yes, a significant percentage of visas, even before the change, were going to applications submitted by overseas companies and firms. As for universities, many of them deliberately reserve slots for jobs just as they do in their programs — especially advanced degrees — for foreigners, particularly from China (and Trump plans to allow in 600,000 more Chinese students). This seems totally unfair to Americans. I know qualified Americans who have been trying to get jobs at universities for years now and have never been hired. Perhaps that was because the universities preferred to pay less for foreign workers.
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