Riley Moore's Scapegoat Machine

Responding to: America’s broken legal immigration system is replacing US workers by design · 2026-07-17

What the Piece Argues

Rep. Riley M. Moore (R-WV) argues that the H-1B and OPT visa programs are not broken immigration policy but a system functioning exactly as designed — to let Big Tech and major corporations replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. He cites DHS data showing 83% of H-1B petitions (2020–2024) were for entry-level positions at wages below the local median, DOL findings of a $19,000 wage gap between H-1B minimums and American workers in the same occupations, and a Trump administration fraud task force identifying more than 10,000 OPT cases involving suspect or nonexistent employers. He characterizes OPT — an executive-regulatory program never passed by Congress — as allowing over 400,000 foreign graduates to work without wage floors, hiring-preference requirements, or caps, while enabling companies to avoid payroll taxes. His conclusion: abolish both programs entirely.

Receipts

The piece wants you to believe that the path to protecting American workers runs through one door: restricting legal immigration — a framing that protects the machinery that actually suppresses wages.

• The framing wants you to believe the visa system is the primary — nearly the only — mechanism driving wage depression and job displacement for American workers.
• The framing wants you to believe that abolishing H-1B and OPT would restore wages, protect jobs, and fix the structural problem.
• The framing wants you to believe its author is a champion of the working American.

What’s really going on

• The same political coalition advocating immigration restriction has, for four decades, systematically dismantled every other mechanism American workers had to resist wage suppression: it has blocked the PRO Act, fought every minimum wage increase, gutted overtime protections, slashed OSHA funding, and starved the NLRB (the agency that protects the right to organize). Restricting visas without restoring those protections doesn’t lift workers — it just changes which vulnerable population gets exploited.
• The piece treats visa abuse as a complete explanation when it is one channel in a multi-channel profit-extraction system. Monopsony power, union collapse, corporate consolidation, and the gutting of labor standards all suppress wages independently of immigration levels. The piece mentions none of them.
• The piece never once discusses the immigrant workers themselves — who are, by the piece’s own data, the most exploited participants in the system it describes: paid $19,000 less, lacking organizing rights, lacking overtime protections, lacking legal recourse when their employer cheats them. The piece calls them a “replacement,” not workers.
• The institutional authors of the status quo the piece decries — the Chamber of Commerce, the tech lobby, ALEC — are the same donor network that funds the political coalition advancing this argument. The piece acknowledges this (“designed by corporate lobbyists”) and then protects them anyway by blaming the immigrant.

The anchor receipt: the piece’s own sentence — “That system was designed by corporate lobbyists and exists to bring foreign workers into America en masse while asking as few questions as possible” — paired with its total silence on the four-decade record of worker-protection dismantling by the same political coalition advancing this argument.

The DEFCON Ladder

DEFCON 5 — Polite Reframe

When to use: a good-faith family member or coworker who shares the piece, believes it’s standing up for American workers, and is genuinely persuadable when shown the full picture.

You got laid off last spring. Same story — the company brought in H-1B workers at significantly less pay. The Department of Labor confirmed it this March: the minimum wages employers are required to pay H-1B workers are set $19,000 lower than what U.S. workers earn in the same occupations and locations. The congressman went on camera, blamed the visa program, said the system was rigged against you. And he wasn’t wrong that the visa was part of it.

But here’s what nobody told you: that same congressman voted against the PRO Act, which would have made it easier for your colleagues to organize and negotiate for better wages. He voted against every minimum wage increase that came to the floor. He supported budgets that cut the Department of Labor’s enforcement division. He gutted the overtime rule that would have put more money in your paycheck.

The H-1B worker didn’t do that to you. The congressman did — and then he pointed at the immigrant and told you to be angry at them instead.

The real problem isn’t just the visa program. The real problem is the entire system that lets companies cut wages and gut protections — and the politicians who dismantled every tool American workers had to fight back while telling you the immigrant was the enemy.

If we want to protect American workers, we protect all workers — the right to organize, the right to overtime, the right to a living wage, the right to a safe workplace. We don’t just swap which vulnerable population gets exploited and call it reform.

DEFCON 4 — Firm Moral Superiority

When to use: a mixed-faith audience — the op-ed page, a community forum, a policy discussion — where moral seriousness and documented evidence carry more force than heat.

The congressman says the legal immigration system was designed by corporate lobbyists to replace American workers. He is correct about the design and wrong about the solution.

The documented design: DHS found that 83% of H-1B visas petitioned between 2020 and 2024 were for entry and junior level positions at wages well below the local median — and the Chamber of Commerce, the tech industry’s lobbying arms, and ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) have spent decades building exactly that pipeline. They wrote the model legislation. They funded the campaigns. They lobbied for the “dual intent” provision in the Immigration Act of 1990 that the piece itself cites. This is the documented institutional authorship.

The omission: that same institutional network — and the political coalition it funds — has spent those same decades dismantling the infrastructure that protects American wages. They’ve blocked the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. They’ve fought every minimum wage increase. They’ve gutted the Department of Labor’s enforcement budget. They’ve weakened the NLRB. They’ve killed overtime expansion. They’ve slashed OSHA funding. They are advancing the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint to further defund federal labor agencies.

The piece acknowledges the corporate authorship of the visa system — “designed by corporate lobbyists” — and then pivots to blaming the immigrant workers those corporations exploit. That pivot is the piece’s actual function: it protects the corporate extraction model by directing worker anger at its most vulnerable participants rather than at its architects.

A system genuinely designed to protect American workers would address visas and monopsony and union rights and wage floors and labor enforcement — simultaneously. The piece addresses only the channel that happens to align with nativist sentiment while protecting every other channel the corporate donor class needs intact. That is not worker protection. That is worker management.

The American worker deserves better than a scapegoat. They deserve the structural protections this congressman’s coalition has spent forty years dismantling.

DEFCON 3 — Mockery and Ridicule

When to use: a bystander audience — social media, a comment thread, a conversation where the piece is being shared as proof that someone cares about American workers.

Let me see if I have this straight.

The congressman from West Virginia — a state where coal companies poisoned the water, gutted pensions, and left towns hollowed out — wants you to believe the threat to American workers is a guy from Bangalore on an H-1B visa.

Riley Moore. A man whose family has held political power in West Virginia for generations. Whose party cut corporate taxes, gutted labor enforcement, and blocked every worker protection bill that came to the floor. This man wants to protect you from the foreign worker making $19,000 less than you — a gap his donors created, his donors profit from, and his donors need you angry at someone else about. Meanwhile, more than 11 million working-age Americans with STEM degrees aren’t working in STEM jobs — not because of a talent shortage, but because the system this congressman protects doesn’t value them either.

The piece says the system was “designed by corporate lobbyists.” Correct. And the congressman’s solution is to keep the corporations and fire the immigrants. Not the unions — his party already killed those. Not the overtime rules — his party gutted those. Not the minimum wage — his party blocked every increase. Just the immigrant. The one variable that costs his donors nothing to sacrifice.

Yoda’s diagnostic applies here with uncomfortable precision: fear of job loss, channeled into anger at the immigrant, hardened into hatred of the foreign worker — while the suffering stays exactly where it was, because the structure that produces it remains untouched. The fear was manufactured. The anger is being harvested. The congressman is the harvesting machine.

Here’s the punchline: the piece says the H-1B program is “not a bug but a feature.” The congressman who votes against every worker protection — while his donors profit from the cheap labor pipeline — is also not a bug but a feature. He’s part of the design. The immigrant is the distraction.

DEFCON 2 — Aggressive Villainization

When to use: a hostile exchange — someone sharing the piece triumphantly, or a forum where the “they’re replacing us” narrative is being deployed as though it were an argument.

Read this piece again, but this time look at what it doesn’t say.

It doesn’t mention unions. Not once. The single most effective mechanism American workers ever had to resist wage suppression — and the congressman can’t bring himself to name it.

It doesn’t mention the PRO Act — the bill that would restore workers’ right to organize. His party blocked it.

It doesn’t mention overtime. The Obama-era overtime rule would have extended protections to millions of salaried workers. His party gutted it.

It doesn’t mention the minimum wage. $7.25 an hour since 2009. His party has blocked every increase.

It doesn’t mention OSHA. The agency that keeps you from dying at work. His party slashed its funding.

It doesn’t mention the NLRB — the agency that protects your right to form a union without getting fired. His party is trying to eliminate it.

It mentions none of these things because mentioning them would reveal the piece for what it is: a machine designed to direct your anger at the most vulnerable person in the room while the people who actually suppress your wages walk away clean.

The piece boasts that the Trump fraud task force found over 10,000 suspect OPT cases — foreign students claiming employers that don’t exist. It never asks who was hiring them. Which corporations were exploiting the pipeline? Which employers were the demand side of the fraud? Silence. Because the employers are the congressman’s donors, and the fraud prosecution is theater. The immigrant takes the fall. The corporation gets another quarter of cheap labor.

The H-1B worker is the mirror this congressman doesn’t want you to look into. In that mirror you’d see: the congressman himself, voting against every protection you have, taking money from the same corporations exploiting you both, and telling you the other worker is the problem.

Nemik’s manifesto from Andor names the operating principle: tyranny requires constant effort. The effort here is keeping workers focused on the immigrant — the effort of running the fraud investigations, the Fox News segments, the op-eds — while the real extraction continues unmentioned, undisturbed, and well-funded.

DEFCON 1 — Nuclear Satire

When to use: the audience has heard the polite version, the firm version, the mockery, and the mirror — and the talking point is still being deployed as though it were serious analysis.

Riley Moore — whose family’s political dynasty has been intertwined with West Virginia’s extraction economy for generations — wants to protect you from foreign workers.

His party broke the air traffic controllers’ union in 1981 and never looked back. His party blocked the PRO Act. His party killed overtime expansion. His party fought every minimum wage increase. His party slashed OSHA funding. His party gutted the NLRB. His party is advancing a blueprint — Project 2025, written by the Heritage Foundation and funded by the same donors — to further defund federal labor agencies.

And after four decades of dismantling every protection American workers had against wage suppression, this congressman — this heir to the machine — shows up on Fox News to tell you the problem is the H-1B visa holder from Hyderabad making $19,000 less than you. Not the 400,000-plus foreign graduates working through OPT with no wage floor, no cap, and no congressional authorization — the program his party could reform or abolish but won’t, because the corporations that fund him need that labor stream exactly as it is.

The piece says the system was “designed by corporate lobbyists.” It was. And the congressman is one of their best products: a man who votes against your overtime, your union, your minimum wage, your workplace safety — and then performs outrage on television about the immigrant his donors hired to replace you.

The H-1B worker isn’t your enemy. Your enemy is the congressman who votes against every protection you have while telling you he’s fighting for you. He’s not fighting for you. He’s fighting for the extraction model that keeps his donors’ margins high and your wages low. The immigrant is the misdirection. The congressman is the grift.

If this were actually about protecting American workers, the piece would mention the word “union” at least once. It would mention overtime. It would mention the minimum wage. It would mention the NLRB. It doesn’t mention any of them — because the congressman’s donors need those protections gone more than they need the immigrants gone. The immigrants can be replaced. Worker organizing can’t be — which is why his party has spent forty years making sure it never comes back.

DEFCON 1+ — Prophetic Indictment

When to use: the audience responds to moral witness — the prophetic tradition, the scriptural indictment, the voice that names corruption in the language the corrupt claim to honor.

The prophet Amos saw this. He saw the merchants who “trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth” and “turn justice into wormwood” — who cheat the vulnerable with rigged scales and then offer sacrifice on the Sabbath as though God couldn’t see the books. The mechanism is unchanged across twenty-eight centuries: the powerful extract, the worker suffers, and the powerful blame the worker’s neighbor.

The piece acknowledges that “corporate lobbyists” designed the system. That is the prophet’s evidence in the mouth of the defendant. When 83 percent of H-1B petitions are for entry-level workers at below-median wages, the “specialized labor” pitch is a goddamn lie. The corporations designed the pipeline. The corporations profit from the cheap labor — $19,000 per head, per year, straight off the top. And the congressman — the elected representative of working people — protects the corporations by blaming the immigrant.

The congressman knows what the prophet knew: you cannot serve the extraction and protect the worker. You cannot vote against the union and claim to stand for the working man. You cannot gut overtime protections and perform outrage about wage suppression. You cannot slash the agency that protects the right to organize and call yourself a champion of the organized. These are contradictions, and the prophet’s word for the man who carries them without flinching is the word Jeremiah used: he no longer knows how to blush.

James wrote that religion pure and undefiled before God is to visit orphans and widows in their affliction. The H-1B worker — paid $19,000 less, stripped of organizing rights, denied overtime protections, called a “replacement” instead of a person — is the widow in this parable. The congressman who votes against every protection that worker has, and then uses that worker’s vulnerability as a talking point, is performing the exact religion James condemned: the faith that says “be warm, be filled” and gives nothing. It is piety in the service of hell.

The piece never once names the immigrant worker as a person. It calls them a “replacement.” That is the prophet’s diagnostic: when the powerful can no longer see the face of the person they are profiting from, they have lost the capacity the prophet requires. The congressman sees a visa number, a wage differential, a talking point. The prophet sees a human being exploited by the same machine that exploits the American worker — and asks only one question: who built the damn machine?

The machine was built by the corporations the congressman protects. And the congressman knows it. He said so himself, in his own piece: “designed by corporate lobbyists.” He just doesn’t want you to follow that sentence to its conclusion.

DEFCON 1++ — Profane Scorched-Earth

When to use: the audience has heard every version and needs the full cathartic release — gloves off, expletives unleashed, no pretense of composure. The loudest, hardest, final tier.

The fucking gall of this man.

Riley Moore — whose family has held political power in West Virginia for generations, whose party has spent four decades dismantling every protection American workers ever had — writes a piece on Fox News telling you the problem is the H-1B visa holder from Hyderabad.

His party broke the unions. His party blocked the PRO Act. His party killed overtime expansion. His party fought every goddamn minimum wage increase since 2009. His party slashed OSHA funding. His party gutted the NLRB. His party is actively trying to defund the Department of Labor. And after all of that — after stripping American workers of every tool they had to resist wage suppression — this motherfucker has the audacity to stand up and say the threat to American workers is the immigrant.

The piece says the system was “designed by corporate lobbyists.” You goddamn right it was. And you, congressman, are the system’s best goddamn product. You vote against your constituents’ overtime. You vote against their union. You vote against their minimum wage. You vote against their workplace safety. You take the corporations’ money. You do their legislative bidding. And then you show up on Fox News and tell the people you just sold out that the problem is the foreigner.

That’s not protection. That’s the oldest fucking scam in the book. The rich steal from the workers, the workers blame the immigrant, and the rich walk away clean — counting the money they saved while you were busy hating the wrong person.

The H-1B worker making $19,000 less than the American worker? That worker is getting fucked by the same corporations that are fucking you. The same donors. The same extraction model. The same congressman who votes against both of your interests while telling one of you to blame the other.

If you gave a shit about American workers, congressman — if you actually gave a shit — you’d vote for the PRO Act. You’d raise the minimum wage. You’d restore overtime protections. You’d fund OSHA. You’d strengthen the NLRB. You’d do every goddamn thing your party has voted against for forty years.

But you won’t. Because your donors don’t want workers who can organize, workers who can demand overtime, workers who have a floor under their wages, workers who have an agency protecting their right to stand together. Your donors want workers who are desperate, divided, and blaming the immigrant. And you deliver.

The piece is a con. The congressman is the con artist. And the American worker — the one getting laid off, the one whose wages are flat, the one who can’t organize, the one whose overtime got gutted — is the mark. The immigrant isn’t the threat. The threat is the congressman who votes against every protection you have while telling you he’s the one fighting for you. He’s not fighting for you. He’s fighting for the people paying him to keep you angry at the wrong target.

Go read the piece one more time. Count how many times it mentions unions. Count how many times it mentions overtime. Count how many times it mentions the minimum wage, OSHA, the NLRB, or the right to organize. The answer is zero. Not one fucking mention of the tools that actually protect American workers. Because the piece isn’t about protecting workers. It’s about protecting the extraction — the corporate model the congressman himself identified as the system’s architect — by making sure you never look at the architect. You only look at the immigrant.

That is the scam. That is the whole goddamn scam. And the congressman just published it on Fox News with his name on it.