SARASOTA, Fla.—Changes need to be made to the United States legal immigration system as well as stopping illegal border crossers, according to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, border czar Tom Homan, and former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.
They said that is especially true when it comes to distributing visas.
There are legal ways for different types of workers, like seasonal workers and agricultural workers, to come work in the country, Wolf said during a roundtable panel hosted by New College of Florida on March 20.
Those legal outlets have been mismanaged and abused over time, he said, and they need to be updated by Congress to create “the right workforce” in the country.
“Congress actually needs to do its job and ... reform the legal immigration system so that we have workers here for the economy that is built today, not an economy of three decades ago,” he said. ”And so it just doesn’t work.”
Two of those visas specifically mentioned during their remarks were the H-1B visa and the H-2A visa.
The H-1B is used to bring in skilled laborers, which is utilized significantly by tech companies to bring Asian employees stateside, while the H-2A is the temporary agricultural visa.
All three appeared to speak out in support of allowing a legitimate seasonal labor force that comes into the country for a time and then goes home after their work is done.
They all said they see a way of enforcing that is by making e-verify, the process a company has to go through to verify the legal status of every one of their employees, mandatory.
DeSantis said that temporary work visas like the H-2A without mandatory e-verify have incentivized more illegal immigrant labor forces as “a way to just have dirt cheap labor and then export all the associated costs with that to the general public.”
“Basically, it’s a business that is socializing the cost of its operation to taxpayers,” he said to the audience members. “Because [when] you bring in someone illegally, who pays for their health care if something goes wrong? You do.”
E-verify is already partially mandatory in the state, and bipartisan efforts are underway in Tallahassee to require every employee to be subject to that vetting process.
The governor also suggested that young Americans can start going back to work to fill these part-time, low-skilled labor jobs.
DeSantis said abuses exist in the use of H-1B visas as well, stating that the visa holders are essentially indebted to the hiring company, working exclusively there for a significant period of time for less pay.
He cited a recent situation in Florida where American employees had to train their H-1B replacement before being let go.
Homan, meanwhile, joked about being in the “exporting business” regarding immigration rather than importing and said he agreed with what DeSantis and Wolf had said.
He disclosed that when he was re-roofing his home, he had to go through several companies until he found one that could guarantee a fully legal workforce.
He said that one builder had hired 20 U.S. citizens to work for $20 an hour but had to let them go as all of his competitors were paying illegal immigrants at a rate of $7 an hour.
This is about keeping wages at a certain level, and keeping Americans employed, he said. There is a way to bring people in legally and improve these systems, but Congress needs to act.
