Washington, DC – President Trump shocked many of his own supporters this month when he doubled down on his defense of the H-1b visa program, insisting that American companies “need access to the best talent in the world.” For Texans, who’ve watched this program undercut the wages of their neighbors for decades, the remarks landed with a thud. Even more frustrating is that the loudest longtime champion of the H-1b system isn’t a Democrat at all, but Texas Senator John Cornyn—Congress’s most reliable ally to the outsourcing lobby and a consistent advocate for expanding H-1b allotments and giving good-paying American jobs to foreign workers.
The FY 2024 Labor Condition Application data, the mandatory filings companies submit before importing H-1b workers, tells a story very different from what the political class sells.
For years, the public has been told these visas fill “critical shortages.” The numbers show the opposite. According to federal LCA filings for FY 2024, employers sought more than 223,000 foreign workers in the Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services sector alone. That sector, known by its NAICS code 54, accounts for more than half of all H-1B activity in the United States. And when you drill down, it becomes clear that these are not exotic, rarefied roles requiring knowledge unavailable in the American labor pool. They are overwhelmingly standard computer jobs that tens of thousands of Americans are already trained to perform.
The data reveals that more than 90 percent of all H-1b roles in NAICS 54 are computer-related: software engineers, developers, data analysts, and project managers. The top job title, Software Engineer, accounted for 27,875 cases. Software Developer followed with over 20,000. Senior engineers, architects, data scientists, and business analysts rounded out the list.
These are not obscure specialties. They are the backbone of the modern American workforce. For decades, U.S. universities have produced more graduates in these fields than the market will absorb, leaving many Americans struggling to compete against corporations that prefer cheaper, visa-dependent workers.
Outside the tech sector, the top industries importing H-1b labor also contradict the “skills shortage” narrative. After Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, the next-largest sectors were Information; Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing; Finance and Insurance; Educational Services; Retail; Health Care and Social Assistance; and Materials Manufacturing.
These industries requested tens of thousands of foreign workers. The average salaries attached to these filings—ranging from $118,000 to well over $160,000 in many categories—show the financial motive at play. These are not low-wage jobs Americans refuse to do. They are well-paid jobs that companies would rather fill with workers who cannot negotiate, unionize, or threaten to leave without risking deportation.
In the number-one sector alone, the breakdown of job titles shatters any illusion that Americans “can’t” do this work. Corporations filed for 5,777 Senior Software Engineers, 3,323 Data Engineers, 3,093 mid-level Software Development Engineers, and more than a 1,000 DevOps professionals. Many of these positions mirror exactly the roles American workers have been laid off from in recent years, only to watch their own jobs filled by imported labor. Some have even been forced to train their replacements before being shown the door. Yet corporate lobbyists continue insisting that the domestic talent pool is insufficient.
The federal data paints a clear picture: the H-1B program is not filling shortages—it is creating them. And policymakers like Senator Cornyn have helped build this reality. Cornyn has spent years pushing expansions of the visa program, arguing that American competitiveness depends on foreign labor pipelines. His advocacy has aligned closely with the interests of multinational consulting firms and outsourcing giants, many of which are among the top H-1b filers each year. The H-1b program has become a subsidy for companies that want highly skilled labor without paying highly skilled wages.
That context makes the President’s recent remarks even more uncomfortable for voters who believed he would stand with American workers. Trump’s instinct has always been to support U.S. industry, but on this particular issue, industry has misled him. Corporations insist they need imported talent because they cannot find qualified Americans, but never mention that federal data contradicts them. They don’t mention that wages in many of these fields have stagnated even as demand supposedly soars. They don’t mention that the program legally allows companies to pay foreign workers below the median market wage.
The “why” is simple: companies want leverage. H-1b workers are tied to their employers. They cannot easily switch jobs, demand raises, or push back against exploitative conditions. American workers can—and do. The H-1b program shifts bargaining power away from citizens and toward multinational firms, and Congress has allowed this system to grow because corporate donors prefer it that way.
If President Trump truly wants to put American workers first, and Make America Great Again, this is the moment to look past the talking points and confront what the data reveals. And if John Cornyn wants to defend the Texas workforce he claims to represent, he could start by acknowledging that the H-1b program he championed is now a mechanism for replacing Americans, not empowering them. The numbers are in. The shortage isn’t talent. The shortage is honesty.