Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says President Donald Trump envisions the H-1B visa program as a temporary pipeline for skilled foreign workers to help rebuild U.S. industrial capacity—not as a way to replace American jobs.
“For years—20 to 30 years—we have offshored precision manufacturing jobs, and the president’s point here is, again, we can’t snap our fingers and say, ‘You’re going to learn how to build ships overnight,’” Bessent said, mentioning planned semiconductor investments in Arizona as an example.
“I think the president’s vision here is to bring in overseas workers where these jobs went ... who have the skills, three, five, seven years, to train the U.S. workers, then they can go home, the U.S. workers fully take over.”
Kilmeade noted that critics say the program gives jobs to noncitizens that Americans could otherwise hold. Bessent countered that the immediate problem is a lack of specialized know-how.
“An American can’t have that job because we haven’t built ships in the U.S. for years, we haven’t built semiconductors,” he said.
Training Americans to Fill Expertise Gap
Bessent’s explanation mirrors Trump’s comments in a separate interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, in which the president defended the H-1B program while acknowledging concerns about its effect on wages.“Well, I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent when a country. ...” Trump began, before Ingraham interjected: “We have plenty of talented people here.”
“No, you don’t,” Trump replied. “You don’t have certain talents.”
Trump pointed to a recent immigration enforcement action at a South Korean-owned battery plant in Georgia, stating that the facility had relied on experts flown in to help launch production.
“In Georgia, they raided because they wanted illegal immigrants out,” Trump said.
“They had people from South Korea that make batteries all their lives. You know, making batteries [is] very complicated. It’s not an easy thing, and very dangerous.”
Some of those experts, he said, were training American workers to operate the plant.
“You can’t just say a country is coming in, going to invest $10 billion to build a plant, and going to take people off an unemployment line who haven’t worked in five years, and they’re going to start making missiles,” he said.
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck, who represents four South Korean nationals detained in the case, said in September that no U.S. company manufactures the specialized machinery used at the plant.
Workers, therefore, had to come from abroad to install and repair equipment, he said, adding that it would take three to five years to train U.S. workers for the same tasks.
Labor Shortages Drive Demand
Trump’s comments echo longstanding complaints from industry leaders about persistent labor shortages in skilled roles.“Many firms are still navigating a labor shortage and want to hire but are having difficulty doing so,” NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg said.
Thirty-two percent of small businesses reported unfilled jobs in October, and 27 percent named labor quality as their top challenge—its highest reading in nearly three years.
Ford said it has 5,000 job openings for mechanics offering a six-figure salary and many more vacancies in other trades.
“We do not have trade schools. We are not investing in educating the next generation of people like my grandfather, who had nothing, who built a middle-class life and a future for his family.”
The H-1B program allows employers to hire foreign professionals in fields such as technology, engineering, and medicine, with 85,000 visas available annually. Critics argue that some firms utilize the system to replace American workers with cheaper labor.
Supporters—including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major corporations—say it is essential for roles that lack qualified domestic applicants.
