Advocates slam Vance's call for less legal immigration

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(The Center Square) - Legal immigration advocates on Thursday  U.S. Vice President JD Vance's call for a reduction in legal immigration Wednesday night while speaking at an event hosted by Turning Point USA.

Vance said legal immigration pathways are often used as a way to find cheap labor, a claim of which immigration lawyers and advocates disagree.

“We cannot have an immigration policy where what was good for the country 50 or 60 years ago, binds the country inevitably for the future,” Vance said.

Vance said the United States should admit “far less than what we’ve been accepting” of legal immigrants but he stopped short of defining a specific number.

“There’s too many people who want to come to the United States of America and my job as Vice President is not to look out for the interests of the whole world, it's to look out for the people of the United States,” Vance said.

Michelle Waslin, assistant director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, criticized the vice president's comments in a statement to The Center Square.

"This administration said it wanted to target unauthorized immigration, but it clearly wants to reduce all forms of legal immigration and will use any excuse to do so," Waslin said. 

Vance criticized the Biden Administration's immigration policies and called for greater cultural assimilation of immigrants in the country. 

“You’ve got to allow your society to cohere a little bit, to build a sense of common identity, for all the newcomers – the ones who are going to stay – to assimilate into American culture,” Vance said. “Until you do that, you’ve got to be careful about adding any additional immigration in my view.”

Waslin pointed to examples of Polish and Italian immigrants a century ago who integrated into American culture once they arrived in the United States.

"For our entire history, immigrants have integrated, and all evidence shows that immigrants continue to integrate into the fabric of America," Waslin said. "Today's immigrants come from different countries and speak different languages, and they learn English and integrate just as immigrants have throughout our history."  

Vance also criticized visa programs like the H-1B visa for “undercutting the wages of American workers.”

He said the visa program is used to hire foreign nationals for a cheaper rate than it would cost to hire American workers.

“I don’t think we should be hiring accountants from foreign countries when we’ve got accountants right here in the United States that would love to work for a good wage,” Vance said.

Anna Gorisch, founder and managing partner of Kendall Immigration Law Firm, works with visa applicants regularly. She said the application fees to petition for an H-1B worker visa are already very expensive and would deter most employers from hiring foreigners.

“It costs a fortune to hire an H-1B worker,” Gorisch said. “When you’re hiring an H-1B foreign national, the compliance costs are very, very high.”

Included in the employment-based visa fees is a $600 charge for asylum application costs. Gorish said these kinds of fees are used to deter future employment-based visa applicants.

“Those doing it the legal way now directly subsidize the people who come across the border and say asylum,” Gorisch said. “I think at some point what they’re trying to do is price it out of existence.”

On Sept. 19, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B applicants who come into the United States, in an apparent attempt to restrict applications for the visa.

Jordan Fischetti, a former immigration lawyer and a fellow at Americans for Prosperity, said Vance's comments about legal immigration are understandable.

"Americans are still experiencing the negative effects of Biden’s border crisis. This administration is right that we must enforce the law and properly vet people coming into the country."

However, Fischetti acknowledged that the immigration system in the United States is not working how it was intended. 

"Our bureaucratic and outdated immigration system is clearly not working, and everyone knows it. It fails to protect American interests, squeezes economic potential, and incentivizes offshoring."

"To maintain our position as the world’s economic and military superpower, we need an immigration system grounded in the rule of law with strong legal channels, both permanent and temporary, that benefits both immigrants and native-born Americans," Fischetti said. "A well-functioning legal immigration system will also disincentivize illegal entry, lowering the chances of yet another border crisis."