US Senator Eric Schmitt has reacted sharply to newly released H-1B visa data for fiscal year 2025, expressing concern after official figures showed Indian nationals accounted for nearly 70 percent of all approved H-1B applications.
According to the report, India topped the list with 283,772 approved H-1B visas, while China followed far behind with 49,161 approvals.
Sharing excerpts from the report on social media, Schmitt criticised the H-1B system and accused major technology companies of exploiting immigration laws at the expense of American workers.
“While Washington pats themselves on the back, American workers are told to ‘upskill’ or get replaced by H-1B hires,” Schmitt wrote. “The entire system is designed to let companies take advantage of the law.”
The Republican senator also alleged that large technology firms continue hiring foreign workers while laying off US employees.
Citing previous remarks by former US foreign service officer Mahvash Siddiqui, Schmitt claimed that a significant percentage of Indian applicants had used fraudulent credentials to secure visas.
“An ex-visa officer in India shared the dirty secret: 70-90% of Indian applicants gamed the system with fake credentials,” he said, while also alleging that foreign workers later recruit more workers from their own networks.
Schmitt also raised concerns over Chinese nationals working in sensitive science and technology sectors, claiming the Chinese Communist Party could exploit such access for intellectual property theft and espionage.
“Why on earth should the American people lose their jobs to fund CCP crimes?” he wrote.
However, immigration entrepreneur James Blunt pushed back against Schmitt’s claims, arguing that the overall H-1B approval numbers were relatively small for the size of the US economy.
“So we went from ‘millions flooding in’ to around 400,000 approvals, with nearly 70% being renewals of people already here,” Blunt wrote in response.
He argued that the figures did not indicate a large-scale labour market disruption, adding that the number of approved Indian applicants was “like a few high schools’ worth of people” and “not flooding the market.”
The debate has once again spotlighted the politically sensitive H-1B visa programme, which remains central to discussions around immigration, skilled labour shortages, outsourcing, and the future of the US technology workforce.
