Greene calls H-1B “mass replacement” of U.S. workers. The data is less clear.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced legislation to end the H-1B visa program days after Trump backed it, reigniting debate over worker protections and party alignment. To understand whether this is a real issue or more political theater, we analyzed the numbers.

In a move that underscores growing tensions within Republican ranks, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced a bill to eliminate the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. companies to employ skilled foreign workers. The timing was striking: Greene’s announcement came just days after former President Donald Trump publicly defended the program on Fox News, arguing that the country lacks sufficient domestic talent in advanced manufacturing, defense, and high-tech sectors.

According to Axios reporting, Trump told host Laura Ingraham that “you don’t have certain talents,” pushing back against the notion that America has enough qualified workers to fill these specialized roles. That aligns with many corporate policies, which look to outside talent pools across the world to recruit people with technical skills.

As always, we’re interested in the numbers behind the headline. Just how many people are getting H1-B visa approvals each year? Should this be a concern for American workers, or is this just more political theater? We evaluated the real data.

To do that, we started by asking how many H-1B petitions were actually approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services each year. The best source is the USCIS itself. According to their tool, the companies with the most significant number of H1-B beneficiaries approved this year include some of the biggest names in the tech world. That includes Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft.

Greene framed her proposal as a matter of protecting American workers from what she called systemic abuse of the H-1B system by Big Tech, AI companies, hospitals, and other industries. “I am introducing a bill to END the mass replacement of American workers,” she wrote on social media, emphasizing her commitment to putting Americans first.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a different perspective, characterizing the administration’s approach not as replacement but as “knowledge transfer,” where overseas workers would train American counterparts before returning home. This framing suggests the White House sees H-1B visas as a temporary bridge rather than a permanent solution.

And while the number of H1-B visas has been increasing over the past decade, the simple table or spreadsheet doesn’t tell the whole story. Here’s a simple line graph in Google Sheets that shows how initial employment approvals and continuing employment approvals contribute to the total.

And, because Greene calls out “big tech” as one of the biggest opportunities where Americans have been facing competition from foreign workers, we looked at those numbers too. We wanted to see just how much the headcount at Amazon, Meta, and Apple have grown in the past decade.

Amazon has grown about 575%, Meta 480%, and Apple about 49%. These are big tech companies with high headcounts and major opportunities for talented individuals. So how many of these coveted jobs are going to H1-B visa holders?

Greene’s move also represents her latest challenge to Trump on domestic policy, following recent public disagreements over the administration’s foreign policy focus. When Trump suggested she had “lost her way,” Greene responded by reaffirming her commitment to her constituents and her faith. The news comes at an interesting time for the tech world, which faced steep job cuts in recent months.

For now, the numbers suggest something more nuanced than Greene’s framing. The H-1B program is small compared with the total workforce at major tech firms, and employment in those industries has grown, not collapsed, over the past decade.

That does not erase real concerns about abuse in specific cases, nor does it answer every question about wages and bargaining power for American workers. But it does show that claims of “mass replacement” do not clearly appear in the macro data.

The real policy question is whether Congress wants to tighten enforcement and improve worker protections inside the existing H-1B framework, or follow Greene’s lead and try to eliminate the program entirely. Trump’s defense of H-1B workers points in the opposite direction, suggesting that at least some Republicans see high-skilled immigration as a competitive advantage rather than a threat. As the party sorts out that divide, the employment figures will still be there in black and white for anyone who wants to look past the rhetoric.