Why Are U.S. Lawmakers Lobbying for Foreign Students? IDK, Because Rep. Ross Wouldn’t Tell Me.

Author’s Note: This article is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, enter your name and email under “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” located on the right-hand side of the site.

I didn’t think I could get more frustrated with this country after watching leftists insist Sydney Sweeney’s jean commercial was a Nazi dog whistle. But then I looked at U.S. employment stats—and found out, yes, I actually can get more frustrated.

As of 2023, the median salary for natural-born U.S. college graduates is $87,000. For foreign-born graduates who entered on student visas, it’s $115,000—with Indian nationals earning a median of $146,000 and Chinese nationals $125,000. At first glance, that may sound like a win for foreign workers. Some might even say they just work harder than Americans. But the reality is more cynical: these workers are concentrated in high-paying fields—mostly tech—where companies exploit their visa dependence to suppress wages. That $146,000 figure isn’t a premium—it’s a discount. An American in the same role would likely demand even more. Instead, U.S. graduates are priced out or pushed into mid-tier positions. And this wage suppression isn’t incidental. It’s enabled by universities that profit handsomely from international tuition and by U.S. lawmakers who should, instead, be standing up for their own constituents.

One such lawmaker is Representative Deborah Ross of North Carolina. Ross recently co-signed a letter urging Secretary of State Marco Rubio to streamline the student visa process—specifically for Indian nationals—claiming delays are blocking “bright young individuals” from continuing their education and research in the United States.

The letter, sent on July 24, emphasizes how Indian students contribute to science and research and touts the $9 billion they supposedly bring to the U.S. economy. Ross’s stance is presented not as a fringe position but as a shared concern of 14 additional members of Congress who signed on.

[RELATED: No Borders: Higher Education Enables Illegal Immigration]

The problem is that Ross was elected to represent the people of North Carolina—not the people of India. Yet when I reached out—twice—to her office with specific questions such as “Why is the Congresswoman prioritizing visa access for foreign nationals?” and “What is she doing to expand higher education access for American citizens?”, I received no response. Her office didn’t even bother to acknowledge the email—and I called to ensure the email was correct.

I wasn’t surprised by Ross’s unresponsiveness. Her evidenced lack of transparency reflects a broader pattern among American lawmakers who deflect or wholly disappear when asked hard questions about their positions. Nonetheless, I’ll steelman her penned argument. Ross channels a familiar economic justification: foreign students contribute billions, pay full tuition, and subsidize American students.

However, Ross’s claim unravels under the mildest of scrutiny. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education—which intended to defend the economic rationale behind admitting foreign students but inadvertently did the opposite—the 1.1 million international students in the U.S., along with their $44 billion in associated economic activity, are not evenly distributed.

Their presence is heavily concentrated among a few elite college towns and coastal cities. Two of the top ten universities for international student enrollment are located in Boston. Two more in New York City. Parts of California and Texas also make the list. In fact, “The economic activity of international students at the 10th ranked institution, the University of North Texas,” the Chronicle says, “is equal to all the dollars foreign students spend in Oklahoma.”

So if you live outside these elite enclaves, you’re unlikely to see any benefit from this supposed economic boon. North Carolina, for instance, didn’t even make the list of states where foreign students bring in the most money—despite being home to the Research Triangle. But residents are feeling the effects of the foreign influx in other ways. North Carolina’s foreign-born population is growing so rapidly that it’s helping push the state toward becoming the seventh most populous in the country—reshaping its demographic makeup in the process. So why is Rep. Ross so eager to accelerate it?

Perhaps more absurd is a second claim cited in the same Chronicle article—that without foreign students, “apartments wouldn’t be rented.” Anyone who has recently paid rent knows the opposite is true; foreign students, like other cohorts of migrants, increase housing demand, drive up competition, and contribute to supply shortages and rising costs of home and rental properties. So, thanks to the influx of foreign nationals, American citizens now face higher living costs just to remain in their own once-fairly-stable neighborhoods. The idea that Americans should be grateful that someone from another country is outbidding them for a lease is the kind of logic that only makes sense in the echo chamber of a tenured academic—or, apparently, in Ross’s guarded office.

The economic argument, then, starts to look less like a defense of the national interest and more like a rationalization for elite capture.

And let’s not ignore valid national security concerns with admitting foreign nationals. Chinese nationals present the most prominent risk, with thousands of incidents of intellectual property theft, particularly in research areas with military implications, such as cloud seeding, which I recently reported on. There may be security concerns with Indian nationals as well, but the more pressing issue here is structural: Indian nationals are using the U.S. higher education system as a backdoor into the American workforce.

That’s where the H-1B visa comes in.

[RELATED: H-1B Visa Undermines American Students and Workers]

The H-1B visa program was designed to fill gaps in the labor market with “specialty workers” where no qualified Americans could be found. But what we’re actually witnessing is an industry-wide workaround to hire cheaper, more pliable labor. Indian nationals, in particular, graduate from U.S. universities, then transition directly into the American job market under the H-1B visa, often in the tech industry.

While companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google laid off tens of thousands of American workers recently—blaming automation or market corrections—they were simultaneously flooding the system with H-1B applications. In reality, they weren’t automating so much as clearing the way for lower-wage workers to fill the same seats. These same companies also claim there’s a shortage of qualified Americans. But in 2023 alone, more than 134,000 U.S. citizens and green card holders earned computer science degrees from American universities. That same year, over 110,000 H-1B visas were issued in the same field. You do the math.

Defenders of the H-1B visa program often claim that most visas are renewals or that foreign workers face layoffs too, suggesting a level playing field. But these half-explanations dodge the deeper reality: companies favor foreign workers because they are cheaper on both ends of the job spectrum. The reason, again, why foreign nationals are out-earning Americans is because at the high end—the tech roles where Indian nationals often cluster—these workers accept wages significantly lower than what American employees with comparable skills would demand. This squeezes Americans out of top-tier positions. This wage arbitrage benefits employers and ultimately drives down labor standards and stifles upward mobility for American workers.

Nonetheless, the pressing issue of labor exploitation was insufficient to garner a response from Congresswoman Ross. Doesn’t “labor rights” constitute her party’s touted virtue-signalling platform?

Unfortunately, the State Department offered only marginally more substance. When I asked whether Secretary Rubio intended to back Ross and her colleagues, a spokesperson responded with a shield of boilerplate—references to scheduling systems, vague nods to national security—and capped it all off with a quote from Senator Marco Rubio: “A visa is a privilege, not a right.” I can see a bald eagle right now.

To anyone paying closer attention, this is little more than bureaucratic speak, which is to be expected from a sprawling government behemoth, arguably the deepest of the deep state. Legal compliance—filtered through layers of internal rules and institutional ideology—takes precedence over directly answering questions. Still, what was provided is telling: as long as there’s no obvious security risk, slowing the flow of foreign nationals into U.S. colleges isn’t much of a priority. Feeling represented yet?

Still, I glean a hint of light at the end of the education-to-workforce pipeline.

One lawmaker gave me a concrete answer. “American universities should be training and hiring American graduates, not outsourcing opportunity to foreign workers,” said Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin.

Along with Rep. Andrew Clyde, Tiffany introduced the Colleges for the American People Act, which—though it doesn’t solve the broader issues linked with the H-1B system—would close one glaring loophole: colleges and universities are currently exempt from the visa cap that applies to private employers, meaning that universities can hire as many foreign workers as they please. Tiffany’s bill would eliminate that exemption and would require public universities to, for once, actually prioritize American workers. What a novel idea!

If I could add one directive to Tiffany’s bill, it would be the inclusion of higher language proficiency standards for foreign faculty. I’m all too aware that, on several campuses, asking professors to speak clear English is tantamount to a blatant exhibition of white supremacy, but, as Rob Jenkins recently pointed out, many colleges rely so heavily on non-native English-speaking instructors that students can barely follow their own professors. It’s only common sense that we fix this very fixable matter. Who knows, with so many new open positions perhaps colleges could even hire back conservatives defenestrated from the ivory tower over the last three decades.

[RELATED: How Chinese Students Are Changing Our Colleges]

So, before I explode, I’ll conclude this relatively lengthy essay with the following:

At the heart of the issue is the anti-American prioritization of foreign nationals over U.S. citizens—first in college admissions, then in hiring. Universities treat international students as revenue streams. Tech companies, in particular, exploit the visa system to drive down wages. And lawmakers like Ross are tirelessly working behind the scenes to ensure a faster and easier process for everyone—oh, except for the American people.

We’re told it’s about innovation, inclusion, or global competitiveness. But the truth is, it’s about power, profit, and a political class that’s increasingly disconnected from the citizens they’re supposed to serve. And if this scheme is energized by the “best and brightest” refrain, we’d do well to remember Rep. Tiffany’s words: “If we have to go to other countries to get the best and brightest, that is a real indictment of our educational system.”

If we don’t start calling this out, our institutions will keep bending to outside interests. And the Americans these institutions were built to serve will keep getting pushed aside.

Follow Jared Gould on X.

Cover by Jared Gould using image of Rep. Deborah Ross on Wikipedia and image of the State Department on Wikimedia Commons