President Donald Trump’s aide and former adviser Steve Bannon made an explosive remark on foreign students in the country and the H-1B visa programs, calling for a complete purge of international students. “I don’t think you should have any foreign students in the country right now,” Bannon said, adding that this is elbowing out American students. Calling the situation uncontrollable, Bannon said instead of stapling a green card to their diploma, the administration should staple an exit visa. “Boom, you are out of here. You get 30 days to hang out with classmates, you can come back for all the alumni stuff, but you are gone,” Bannon said.The Trump adviser said absorbing all talent from all across the world is not going to make the world a better place. “The countries of the world won’t get better if you’re sucking up every piece of talent. That’s how the British ran their empire. It’s imperial,” Bannon said. Bannon said if everyone wants to come to Harvard and they can’t do that, they will come through central America and the US will remain in the same mess that it’s trying to clear now.The H-1B visa program is again much in discussion as tech companies have announced major layoffs. Tracker Layoffs.fyi says around 80,000 tech jobs have been eliminated so far this year. Companies asserted that foreigners are also losing their jobs and H-1B is not to be blamed as the restructurings are mostly because of AI, American tech workers remain skeptical as the H-1B approvals are also not going down. Around 400,000 visas were approved in 2024, more than twice the number issued in 2000, with the majority of these being renewals of existing visas, rather than new applications. Most of these foreign workers are employed by large tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, who pay to keep hold of foreign-born workers, Newsweek reported. Vice President JD Vance recently warned the tech companies and said it’s unacceptable that US companies are laying off Americans and then applying to hire foreignersThe July jobs report released Friday showed a deteriorating labor market in the US, with just 73,000 jobs added for the month. Revisions to earlier data were also significant, with a combined 258,000 jobs slashed from May and June’s numbers.
