Tariffing Goods? Let's Tariff Immigrants, Too

It’s time for America to tariff immigration. If that sounds novel or extreme, remember that the goal of tariffs is to raise revenue from and reduce dependency on imported goods. By this logic, there's no reason the government should not do the same for imported labor. President Donald Trump’s brilliant $100,000 fee on H-1B visas shows us the way.

The new fee on the H-1B program, which allows companies to hire specialist workers from abroad, redefines immigration as a trade issue. Just as the tariff on Chinese furniture protects American manufacturers, Trump's H-1B fee safeguards U.S. college graduates from displacement by imported labor and forces corporations to pay for undercutting domestic labor. Moving forward, they can pay the fee—which puts more money in the U.S. Treasury—or hire Americans.

The government should apply the new H-1B policy, which went into effect on Sept. 21, to all guest worker applicants. The H-2A and H-2B visas, for example, fill hundreds of thousands of American jobs ever year. Americans would take most of these jobs if employers didn’t get to underpay foreigners or pick the cream of the global labor market.

Forcing Businesses to Put Americans First

Marketed to the nation as the surest way to attract the next Einstein, employers have abused the H-1B visa for cheap labor. Thanks to visa mills flooding the system with low-wage applicants, they’ve even hired accountants paid as low as $22 an hour. They skirt the hire-American requirement by creating sock puppet job ads to make it look like they've given it the ol' college try.

America puts an 85,000 yearly cap on H-1B employees. But after the three-year visa expires, employees may renew, putting the total estimate today at over half a million such workers.

Policing this policy hasn't worked well, and "reforming" the program will only create a free-for-all for specific employers and industries to lobby for a bill that benefits them at their competitors' expense. 

Instead of visa reform, taxing guest workers the same way the government taxes imported goods creates an easier way to fix systemic visa abuse. The government does not determine tariff rates by weighing the cost-benefit analysis of each imported good. Doing so would cost taxpayers a fortune in bureaucrats. Instead, it charges a flat fee per item based on the type of good. 

Likewise, charging employers a flat fee per immigrant will weed out corruption and abuse of the guest worker system and make visa mills unprofitable. Employers who genuinely can't find an American resident to fill their job will pay up; those who could hire locally with more effort won't—just as importers who want to sell foreign-made goods badly enough will pay the tariffs. 

We'll hear major companies complain that this creates an unfair burden on their labor pool. They'll whine that America, the nation with the most colleges and universities on earth, doesn't produce enough qualified graduates to fill their demands. 

If true, it just means the labor market is distorted. 

Economist George Borjas estimates that a 10 percent increase in immigrants with a particular skillset depresses wages of that group by three percent. Even after an economy adjusts to the new immigrant pool, wages in high-immigrant industries remain lower than industries that received less immigration. Job seekers don’t have to be economists to instinctively understand this. They won't choose one that's brimming with cheap foreign laborers but instead opt for another with less competition. 

(RELATED: President Trump’s Gold Card Plan Will Slash Deficit by Billions Without Tax Hikes)

If the government unclogs high-immigrant career paths, however, more Americans will flock to those industries. And in the long run, we'll all benefit from it.

Trying to achieve a reformed H-1B program through Congress would take weeks of debate and likely never pass. Trump's executive order immediately makes hiring from abroad a costly choice, not the default option.  

How Did the Guest Worker Program Get This Bad?

Those who defend the current system want to keep it the same or expand it for all the wrong reasons.

Guest worker programs are not charity. They're corporate welfare dressed up as necessity, just as free trade in goods is welfare for retail. It doesn't mean there is no place for international trade or immigration, but both should be made to work as intended and should not work against America's native citizens.

The income inequality the Left decries was created by Democrats' immigration policy to diversify future Americans' ethnic backgrounds. Republicans were more than happy to play along, as their uber wealthy donors benefitted from the cheap labor.

For instance, tech moguls Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy threw a fit on X last December when they realized the America First coalition they backed in the election wanted to end or greatly reduce the H-1B visa program. Incidentally, last April, Musk's company Tesla put in an order for 2,000 new H-1B visa workers while laying off 15,000 Americans.

America should prioritize its own workers by extending Trump's H-1B visa fee model to all guest worker programs. Tariffs on imported labor, like those on goods, protect the domestic market—specifically, the livelihoods of American workers. By imposing a flat fee on every foreign hire, the government can deter corporate reliance on cheap overseas labor while generating revenue for the U.S. Treasury. 

This policy cuts through bureaucratic loopholes and visa abuse, ensuring employers invest in American talent first. It's not about closing borders, but ending corporate welfare disguised as a competitive economic policy. Hiring American should be the default, and charging employers a steep fee when they do otherwise will make it so.

(READ MORE: The Inconvenient Truth about H-1B Visas)