This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
It's one of the most consequential yet underreported stories in America today – the massive job loss and life disruption for hundreds of thousands of American workers, particularly in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), due to widespread abuse of America's immigration and visa laws. The ongoing crisis, which daily results in tremendous suffering and depression on the part of American workers, and sometimes even suicide, was the focus of a recent event at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., which featured as a key expert Amanda Bartolotta, WND's senior investigative journalist. Bartolotta's exclusive and groundbreaking reports are not only informing many Americans on the subject, but are being followed by key parts of the Trump administration, including the Office of the Vice President and the Justice Department.
Heritage, long the nation's premier conservative think tank, convened a panel of five nationally recognized experts on immigration, labor policy and visa reform, to explain the massive problem – and its solutions – to government officials, media and the public. Along with Bartolotta, the other four expert panelists included Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies; Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers and executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy; Ronil (Ron) Hira, Ph.D., P.E., associate professor, Department of Political Science, Howard University; and, moderating the discussion, Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
The Nov. 19 policy discussion, titled "How the H-1B Visa Led to Importing Mass Cheap Labor," examined how the H-1B program, originally created as a narrow, temporary, non-immigrant visa for specialized workers, has expanded into a gargantuan pipeline for importing large volumes of low-cost, highly controllable immigrant workers at the direct expense of American professionals. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has publicly referred to the arrangement as nothing short of "indentured servitude."
The event drew a capacity in-person audience of approximately 100, including officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of State, as well as congressional staff, members of policy organizations, media representatives and those involved with enforcement of immigration laws. In addition, more than 500 "attendees" registered to watch virtually, reflecting the growing national concern about visa abuse and the widespread and alarming displacement of American workers.
Notably, the audience included Mahvash Siddiqui, the U.S. Foreign Service officer who served as a consular official in Chennai, India, one of the world's largest H-1B processing posts. Siddiqui provided first-hand insight into systemic fraud in the visa pipeline, including forged degrees, fabricated employment credentials, third-party staffing company schemes, India-based networks orchestrating large-scale visa abuse and the issuance of more than 220,000 H-1Bs and 140,000 H-4s in 2024 alone. Her disclosures underscored the deep structural vulnerabilities of the program and framed the panel's discussion of foreign influence, labor trafficking and downstream green-card acquisition.
Panelists covered a comprehensive range of topics, including:
* The history and original legislative intent of the H-1B program, with Hira and Krikorian detailing how a narrowly crafted visa program intended for short-term, specialized workers evolved into a mechanism for uncontrolled mass labor importation.
* Outsourcing body shops, loopholes and corporate abuse, with Lynn and Hira outlining how offshore labor firms and multinational staffing companies dominate the program, replacing American workers with lower-cost foreign labor.
* PERM (Program Electronic Review Management) fraud and discriminatory hiring, regarding which Bartolotta presented the pipeline from H-1B misuse to green-card acquisition, explaining how so-called PERM recruitment is systematically manipulated to exclude U.S. workers while securing permanent residency for foreign labor.
* Impact on the American workforce, with panelists highlighting how U.S. STEM graduates struggle to find employment, how tens of thousands of mid-career American professionals are laid off, so-called "labor shortages" are artificially manufactured narratives, and American wages are suppressed and job mobility undermined.
During the following Q&A with the audience, which included federal officials, questions addressed included: Which reforms should take priority, the misuse of federal "training fund" fees collected from visa petitions, and public reactions to high-profile statements on H-1B from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, among others.
Engagement and public impact
Heritage produced individual video clips for each panelist, and interaction metrics across X (Twitter) demonstrated significant public and policy-community engagement:
Heritage officials noted the unusually high engagement levels for a policy event, signaling a deepening public appetite for immigration and labor-market reform.
* WATCH clip of Amanda Bartolotta's speech on X:
