The surge in layoffs prompted by the coronavirus is leading to urgent calls in Washington to end a program that encourages big corporations to hire immigrant STEM graduates, often Chinese, who frequently get paid less than U.S. workers.

Several immigration reform groups said that jobs during the crisis should go to U.S. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates, not guest workers.

“Government leaders should seize the opportunity to hit the ‘reset button’ and ensure that American workers get the first crack at jobs across the economic spectrum,” said Matt O’Brien, research director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

One issue is the temporary H-1B visa used by companies and foreign students to fill specialty jobs cheaply, often in high-tech. Critics say firms, like Disney, hire immigrants on temporary employment passes because they will work for less.

A new FAIR study found that 25%-30% of STEM-related jobs are held by foreigners, double that of other fields.

“On the surface, importing ‘skilled workers’ might seem like a good idea. After all, the common narrative pushed by the open-borders cohort is that there are too few native-born Americans to fill the growing number of high-tech jobs in the country and that tech-savvy foreign workers actually create jobs for the Americans who work in companies supporting STEM enterprises,” said the report.

“However, real-life evidence suggests this is not the case. Despite a booming STEM sector in the United States, American tech workers are not reaping the expected rewards — larger salaries and increased opportunity for advancement,” it said, concluding, “U.S. citizens should be first to benefit from a booming American economy.”

At the Center for Immigration Studies, policy chief Jessica Vaughan is pushing the administration to suspend the planned expansion of other work visas during the virus crisis. "Increasing the number of guestworkers at this time would only add to the economic distress caused by the pandemic and public response to it," she blogged.

O’Brien said the program hurts the U.S. by giving jobs to foreigners who send money home, cutting job security for Americans, and letting Chinese students learn American tech manufacturing techniques that they can take back.

“If the COVID-19 outbreak has demonstrated anything, it is that the United States must grow its capacity to design, manufacture, and distribute drugs, medical testing equipment, and hospital equipment here at home. Following this crisis, the U.S. government should support efforts to create a large pool of skilled Americans to work in these fields. In this case, job security is national security. The U.S. must ensure that it has the skillsets necessary to defend itself from modern threats,” he told Secrets.

And, he added, “If the U.S. wishes to remain a world leader in technological innovation, it has to stop equipping our adversaries and competitors with the skills required to beat us at our own game. And giving our STEM jobs to foreign employees opens a conduit for foreign adversaries like China to steal trade secrets and acquire commercial skills that they might not otherwise be able to obtain. Homegrown American workers may take what they've learned with one employer and start their own company, but they rarely relocate to a hostile foreign country when they do so.”

His report also said, “It is time for the United States to put its own workers first.”