Despite Donald Trump’s longstanding opposition to importing foreign workers rather than hiring Americans, his media company reportedly sought an H-1B visa from the US Department of Labor in 2022 to hire a foreign worker.
Shortly after taking office in 2017, Trump signed an executive order directing Cabinet officials to propose reforms to the H-1B visa program to ensure the visa went to only the most skilled, highest-paid applicants. At the time, Trump argued that Big Tech used H-1B visas to replace Americans with lower-paid foreign workers.
As part of his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump’s “Project 2025” calls for changes in the H-1B visa program to transform it “into an elite mechanism” designed to attract “the best and brightest” while preventing the importation of foreign workers to replace Americans.
However, in June 2022, Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns the social media platform Truth Social, applied for an H-1B visa so it could hire a foreign worker to fill a $65,000-a-year position, the lowest salary category permitted under the visa program. Federal immigration records show that the visa was approved a few months later.
Similarly, records show that the investment firm established by former Trump White House advisor Jared Kushner also applied for and received an H-1B visa for a foreign worker.
According to TMTG, the visa application was made by “prior management.” However, at the time the application was made, the company’s current CEO, former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, was already serving as chief executive.
TMTG insisted that no H-1B visa holder had ever been hired by TMTG, nor did the company plan to hire any foreign workers. The company added that when the current management first learned that an H-1B visa application had been submitted to the Labor Department, the process was “swiftly terminated” in November 2022.
However, a Labor Department spokesperson said there was no record of Trump Media & Technology Group withdrawing the visa application.
