Rosemary Jenks

The employer doesn't have to pay FICA taxes for them, so that's basically a 7.5% discount for employers to hire them over American students.

um and then obama actually expanded the program for stem opt uh to three years instead of one year so these foreign students get three years at an a discount for the employer to essentially find an employer to sponsor them for an h-1b and since they're already in the country they're not going to have to pay this fee

Now, I'm going to step out of bounds here, Steve, and say that I don't actually believe that Secretary Letnick was lying.

I think that he doesn't understand immigration law.

And I think he probably believes everything he said, or at least did.

You know, I don't think that is his intention.

I think the H-1B program needs to be eliminated, full stop.

I think he is trying to make it microscopically better.

But it's not going to work, and it's not going to work because of the complexities of immigration law.

And I don't think he included the Department of Homeland Security in coming up with this order, or the gold card order, for that matter.

And the fact is, they're just not going to work.

because of how complicated the law is and how many workarounds there are for these big employers who don't want to pay a fee, don't want to hire Americans, and can get away with it still under this order.

Well, so we need to stop OPT.

And because it was created by executive fiat, the administration can stop it dead in its tracks today.

Just a stroke of the pen can stop OPT.

But more importantly, we've got to eliminate H-1B.

And by the way, I don't know if you have seen this, but Senator Banks has introduced a bill that doesn't end it.

H-1B, but it does eliminate OPT.

It raises the base salary for H-1B to 150,000, which is almost double its current salary.

It makes a lot of changes that would make a big difference and would definitely cut out the body shops and the people who abuse it most.