The Trump administration just fired a warning shot at Big Tech: dozens of subpoenas are already out, whistleblowers are talking, and the Labor Department’s Inspector General is hunting visa fraud on a scale conservatives have demanded for years.
Inspector General Anthony P. D’Esposito announced Wednesday that his office has begun what he calls the “most aggressive action against foreign labor fraud by an Inspector General this administration.”
The target: H-1B and PERM foreign labor visa programs that D’Esposito says have been hijacked by multinational corporations to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor—and in some cases, feed human trafficking tied to cartels and transnational gangs.
“This is another example of where fraud is fueling violent crime. Much of the visa and the human trafficking that we see when it comes to this foreign labor is tied to cartels [and] transnational gangs.”
D’Esposito told Fox Business his team has already issued dozens of subpoenas and is working “side by side with the president and vice president’s fraud task force” to track down every lead. Whistleblowers, he said, are coming forward with evidence against “some of the biggest companies” abusing the visa system.
Cognizant, a leading American multinational IT and AI consulting company, was specifically called out during the interview for allegedly using H-1B visa workers as cheap labor while locking out American citizens.
The numbers tell the story conservatives have been shouting about for years. Amazon leads the pack with more than 10,000 H-1B visa approvals last year alone. Microsoft approved slightly more than 5,000. Meta, Apple, and Google follow close behind.
The median H-1B worker made $108,000 in 2021, according to the American Immigration Council—more than double the average American worker’s $45,760. Yet nearly two-thirds of H-1B positions certified by the Labor Department are assigned wage levels “well below the local median wage for the occupation,” the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute reported. The Heritage Foundation agreed, noting that only one in six H-1B positions receives top wages.
Translation: foreign workers come to the U.S., make more than the average American by taking high-paying STEM jobs, yet still save anti-American companies money by accepting lower salaries for their expertise level.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma recently fired 20 percent—3,200 employees—yet the parent company Microsoft reportedly filed for thousands of H-1B visas this year with an average salary offering of more than $150,000. A Microsoft spokesperson defended the move to Newsweek, saying the layoffs were “based on business need, not visa status.”
D’Esposito isn’t buying it. He said ending visa-enabled human trafficking and fraud will “not only make America safe again but make America more affordable again” by returning job openings to American workers.
“There is without a doubt human trafficking in the visa programs,” D’Esposito said. His goal: shut down the anti-American worker money-making loophole “to make sure that the hardworking Americans who want to get to work [during] President Trump’s administration are able to do just that.”
The investigation aims to further President Trump’s goal to end foreign violence on American soil and return jobs to the American people, according to D’Esposito.
