How a Populist Approach to Immigrant Visas Will Help Protect Working Americans

When considering immigration policy, we must first affirm that America is a country, not merely an economy. We are a national family, not a corporation. Vice President-elect Vance said it well when he stated at the 2024 Republican National Convention that “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”Indeed, the economy of America exists to serve those people, those citizens … and NOT the other way around. We are far more than cogs in an economic machine, than simple inputs into a GDP model.Just as important as enterprise, America must work always to exalt our shared culture, heritage, and ideals. In this regard, building broad prosperity is far more important than just growing topline GDP. America’s strongest economic eras prioritized a Main Street capitalism that sustains and grows families and communities through the distributism of financial success.In contrast, a fixation on huge corporate profits concocts a false policy north star that distorts our fraternal bonds and dehumanizes the masses. So, America at its best emphasizes economic subsidiarity, the philosophy of widely dispersed economic power. But mass migration predominately suppresses the working classes and centralizes economic power among a small cadre of credentialed, connected elitists who derive disproportionate benefits from the constant flow of cheap foreign labor.Accordingly, in recent days, the winning 2024 Republican coalition stirs into tumult as a needed and healthy debate unfolds regarding legal migration to America. This argument juxtaposes populist nationalists vs. the international, business wing of the nascent Trump 2024 coalition.The issue of immigration drove much of the impressive Trump victory on November 5, winning the popular vote, sweeping every swing state, and piling up substantial gains in deeply blue jurisdictions like New York City. Those voters who rallied to President-elect Trump demand real action to secure America’s border and fix a badly broken immigration system that serves the interests of multinational conglomerates and nongovernmental organizations, to the detriment of everyday American citizens.On specifics, Trump voters almost universally agree on a massive crackdown on illegal migration, but major fissures open up regarding the legal side of immigration. This issue resonates as the total foreign-born population of America exploded under President Biden, and now stands at 50 million people, the highest percentage in American history at 15 percent of the population. This huge cohort eclipses even the levels of the Ellis Island era of the Industrial Revolution, when the need for human labor was nearly insatiable.That period of enormous immigration poured into an America that provided almost zero safety net for migrants and into a country that demanded assimilation. After that period of heavy inflows, restrictionists prevailed and America’s foreign-born population share plunged in the 1950s, to only 5 percent of the country, as working Americans thrived and patriotism pervaded. Then, after the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson, the flow of foreigners began to soar.In addition to the upsurge in legal migration, the flow of illegals vaulted higher following President Reagan’s misbegotten decision to amnesty illegal aliens in 1986. Now, America faces an all-out crisis as Mr. Biden threw open the front door to our homeland with reckless disregard for public order or the prerogatives of American citizens.Americans have clearly had enough of this porous border radicalism, including employee visa programs like H-1B which are widely abused and serve the interests of C-suite American executives and Asian foreign nationals, while undermining the pay and job stability of American citizens. These programs were intended to allow the truly exceptional outliers of the world to enter and assimilate into America. Like so many government programs, though, visa programs have been hijacked and perverted by powerful corporate interests, both here and abroad.After a lot of online debate, it seems the populist nationalists prevail, with Elon Musk agreeing with the most potent and efficient reform of all: requiring large salaries and fees from employers to bring in such foreign employees. The super wealthy mogul, himself a legal immigrant, posted on X that employee visas only make sense by “raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically.”Bingo. Therein lies the solution.Now, the devil is in the details, of course. So, a reasonable annual fee for each incoming employee on a visa should be at least $50,000, with half going to the state of the business and half to the federal government. The average minimum salary for these employees should be at least $250,000 per year, and should be mandated to stay above three times the median household income as determined by the Census Bureau ($80,000 in 2023).Such high minimums would guarantee that work visas only welcome in the truly talented stars that will bring big advances to American society. Instead of a work-force replacement program that undercuts Americans, this new system would bring in a very small but super-talented pool of outperformers – and it should replace the entirety of current, confusing employee visa programs.If these foreign employees are actually essential, then Americanfirms will willingly pay the high fees and salaries.Once these reforms are joined with strict border enforcement and vigorous deportations, then America will reclaim sovereignty, build diffused prosperity, protect our culture, and pave the way for a new “roaring ’20s” period ahead. Such a roadmap can also maintain the unity of the broadening America First coalition.This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

How a Populist Approach to Immigrant Visas Will Help Protect Working Americans

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