JD Vance Told College Graduates to Demand Senators Kill the H-1B Program Stealing Their Jobs

April 19, 2026 Cat2, Politics
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Disney forced laid-off American workers to train their foreign replacements as a condition of receiving severance.

That happened a decade ago – and the H-1B visa program that made it legal is still running.

Now JD Vance just told a room full of Georgia college students exactly what he wants them to do about it.

Vance Tells Georgia Voters: Ask Senate Candidates Where They Stand on H-1B Reform

Vance stood before students at a Turning Point USA event in Athens on Tuesday and said something no vice president has ever said to a college crowd.

He told them to become single-issue voters – and the issue is the visa program replacing them before they even graduate.

"Every single one of you should ask those Senate candidates: What do you think about the H-1B visa?" Vance said. "Would you co-sponsor the Vice President's – and former Senator's – legislation to eliminate that program because it's basically just something that big tech companies take advantage of?"

Georgia has a live Senate primary, and Vance used it as a weapon.

Rep. Mike Collins is already leading that primary – and his campaign is built almost entirely on this exact issue.

"Students are told to 'Go to college, study hard, and you'll get a good job!' – just to see companies hire H-1B visa workers to fill those holes," Collins said in a campaign video.

That's not a talking point.

That's what's actually happening.

The H-1B Data Big Tech Does Not Want You to See

Trump's White House released the data last September when it imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions.

The share of IT workers holding H-1B visas climbed from 32 percent in 2003 to over 65 percent in recent years.

Unemployment among recent computer science graduates hit 6.1 percent – more than double the rate for art history majors.

One company received approval for 5,189 H-1B workers in 2025 while laying off roughly 16,000 American employees the same year.

Another slashed its American workforce by 27,000 over three years while collecting 25,075 H-1B approvals.

The Heritage Foundation confirmed what the numbers imply: most H-1B positions pay below the median salary, and only one in six pays the highest wage tier.

The program was sold to Congress as a way to recruit the world's best and brightest.

It became a mechanism for trading Americans out of white-collar careers for cheaper imports.

Vance knows this because he tried to stop it.

"One of the first pieces of legislation I sponsored in the United States [was] effectively to get rid of the H-1B visa," he told the crowd. "Congress has not exactly come along there – but there are far more people sponsoring that legislation today than there were 10 years ago."

Georgia Governor Candidate Owns a Company That Imports Foreign Workers on H-1B Visas

The story inside the story is Rick Jackson.

Jackson is the leading GOP candidate for Georgia governor – and his company Avant Healthcare is built on exactly the business model Vance just declared war on: importing foreign workers to fill American medical staffing jobs on H-1B, EB-3, TN, and EB-2 visas.

His company's website literally lists which visa category it will file for foreign applicants.

So voters in Georgia are being asked to choose between a Senate candidate demanding an end to H-1B and a governor candidate whose business model depends on it.

Vance put that contradiction on the table in front of a room full of young voters and told them to do the math.

Trump has already moved without Congress.

The $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions took effect in September 2025 – upheld by a federal court in December.

Vance confirmed at the Athens event that new H-1B visas are down 90 percent as a result.

But he was clear that administrative action is temporary.

"For us to really make this stick," he said, "we need Congress to codify this stuff."

That's the ask. That's what Tuesday was about – turning college graduates into lobbyists for their own economic future before the window closes.

How Big Tech Lobbied Congress to Replace American Workers With H-1B Visa Holders

The H-1B program launched in 1990.

Industry lobbyists spent the next decade fabricating studies claiming a shortage of American tech workers – inflating the alleged gap from 190,000 open positions in 1997 to 843,000 by 2000 – to justify expanding the visa cap.

The shortage was never real.

What was real was the arbitrage: every dollar cut from an American salary added roughly $50 to $100 in stock value for the companies doing the cutting.

Major firms built entire business models around it.

In 2015, Disney forced its American IT workers to train their foreign H-1B replacements as a condition of receiving severance pay.

Ten senators demanded a Department of Labor investigation.

The investigation found no legal violations.

That's how rigged the system became – legal enough to make American workers train their own replacements.

Here's what the 90 percent drop in new H-1B visas actually means for the kid who just graduated from UGA with a computer science degree.

For the first time in 20 years, the company that was about to hire a cheaper foreign replacement has to think twice.

That's not a talking point – that's a real job that might actually go to an American.

But Trump did that with a proclamation, and proclamations expire.

The $100,000 fee sunsets in September 2026 unless the administration extends it – and every big tech lobbyist in Washington is already working to make sure Congress never makes it permanent.

Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple are the four largest H-1B sponsors in the country.

They are not going to sit still while JD Vance recruits their future employees against them.

Vance knows this.

That's why he didn't fly to Athens to give a speech – he flew there to build an army before Amazon and Microsoft buy enough senators to finish the job.

Sources:

  • Neil Munro, "JD Vance Tells College Grads: Lobby Against the H-1B Program," Breitbart, April 15, 2026.
  • "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Suspends the Entry of Certain Alien Nonimmigrant Workers," White House, September 19, 2025.
  • "The H-1B Visa Needs Drastic Reform to Put Americans First," Heritage Foundation, 2025.
  • "The Rise and Fall of the H-1B Visa," American Affairs Journal, November 2025.
  • "Are American Workers Being Replaced? Inside the H-1B Visa Controversy," Fox News, November 2025.
  • JD Vance remarks, Turning Point USA Tour, Akins Ford Arena, Athens, Georgia, April 14, 2026, as reported by Fox 5 Atlanta and Atlanta News First.