WND By Amanda Bartolotta November 1, 2025
In a bold and unprecedented move, Florida has become the first state in the nation to take formal action against the use of foreign worker visas in its public university system. Gov. Ron DeSantis's new proclamation to "pull the plug"on H-1B visas in state institutions, sets a national example, one that could reshape how other states protect their own graduates and taxpayers.
"This is about putting Florida workers and American citizens first," DeSantis declared. "We can do it with our residents of Florida and with Americans."
It's a landmark moment, a state finally standing up to the federal government's decades-long neglect of American labor. However, the H-1B visa is just one part of a much larger system that feeds cheap foreign labor into American jobs.
The alphabet soup of visa programs
The H-1B visa is the most widely known program, allowing companies to hire foreign workers for "specialty occupations" like technology, engineering and business. Legally, employers are supposed to use it only when they cannot find qualified U.S. workers, but in practice, the system has been massively abused to cut labor costs, replacing Americans with cheaper foreign labor.
But the H-1B is just the visible tip of a much deeper structure of foreign visa pipelines. Another is the F-1 student visa, which allows foreign nationals to study in the United States. After graduation, those students can remain in America and work through programs called Optional Practical Training (OPT) and STEM-OPT (for science, technology, engineering and math fields).
OPT is billed as "hands-on training," but in reality it functions as a government-approved work program that lets international students hold real jobs for up to one year after graduation – or three years under the STEM-OPT extension. Employers don't have to pay Social Security or Medicare taxes for these workers, which means they are much cheaper to hire than Americans. In other words, the classroom has become the cheapest recruiting channel in America.
Universities feed the supply, employers feed the demand
The F-1 student visa and its work-authorization offshoots, OPT and STEM-OPT, have become universities' primary gateway into this system. Once marketed as "cultural exchange," these programs now function as revenue engines that allow schools fill classrooms with full-pay international students while giving corporations access to a never-ending pool of low-cost labor.
More:
https://www.wnd.com/2025/11/citizens-first-florida-launched-first-strike-against-visa/
