Sen. Eric Schmitt Says H-1B Migrants Used to ‘Police’ Americans for DEI

American companies are importing mixed-skill migrants via the H-1B visa program to police Americans’ speech in their workplaces, says Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO).

“In light of everything we know about [corporate] DEI, it’s alarming that American employers appear to be importing foreign workers to work in these [DEI] roles … where they are tasked with policing the speech and thought of our own citizens,” Schmitt tweeted on Thursday. He added:

Rather than recruiting genuinely exceptional top-level talent, in many cases the H-1B visa is now regularly used to staff middle management bureaucracies. Rather than 160+ IQ rocket scientists, it’s being used to import HR managers, customer service representatives, and so on.

Schmitt sent a September 25 letter to Joe Edlow, chief of the immigration service division of the Department of Homeland Security, asking for explanations and data:

The H-1B visa program’s purpose [in 1990] was to address bona fide specialty occupation shortages — chiefly in technical disciplines — not to undercut American workers or import ideological bureaucrats to surveil our workplaces. The fact that the program is being used to hire DEI functionaries from abroad is further evidence of how far it has drifted from its original stated mission. Rather than recruiting genuinely exceptional top-level talent, the H-1B visa is now regularly used to hire and staff middle management bureaucracies. We have seen the same pattern in other low-skill or non-specialty occupations: project managers, communications staff, HR generalists, marketing coordinators, customer service representatives, and so on.

Furthermore, the documents I have only capture positions with explicit keywords like “Diversity,” “Equity,” and “Inclusion” in the title. A much larger swathe of DEI or DEI-adjacent roles could exist under more innocuous titles: “HR Administrator”, “Wellness Coordinator”, etc. {snip}

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