JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis is going after college and university employees working in Florida on H-1B visas.

The work visas are intended to help companies, or in this case, schools, hire highly specialized workers with college degrees.

“Of all employers, they are the ones that would be most responsible for why they can’t find what they need,” said DeSantis.

>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE

According to the Governor’s Office, the University of North Florida currently employs only 19 H-1B workers, but others, like the University of Florida, which is planning to build a graduate campus in Jacksonville, employ many more.

UF employs nearly 500 H-1B workers, many of whom work jobs the Governor argued could easily be filled by American workers.

“Assistant professors in math and engineering from China. Again, why aren’t we producing math and engineering folks?” said DeSantis.

But Robert Cassanello, President of the United Faculty of Florida, argued it’s not as simple as the Governor is making it out to be.

“He speaks with a great deal of ignorance about how all of this stuff works when he says, Oh, we could just find a math professor on the street to teach this class. How does he know that?” said Cassanello.

The details of the Governor’s proposal are still murky, and it’s unclear whether he intends to force Florida schools to purge all current H-1B workers, or simply stop hiring new ones.

[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]

Either way, Cassanello argued it’s ironic for someone who has advocated for meritocracy, like DeSantis, to want to limit schools’ ability to find the best and the brightest simply because they don’t live in the US.

“Now we find that DeSantis is actually okay with quotas, you know, when the quotas are not DEI related,” said Cassanello.

Any plan to limit colleges and universities’ ability to hire H-1B workers will have to go through the State Board of Governors.

So far, specific details regarding what that language may look like are not available.

[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]

Action News Jax Top Stories