👨‍🌾 🇺🇸 🚷 A think tank co-founded by Facebook’s founding president wants an entirely new visa category to repopulate struggling American communities with foreign workers.

It’s called the Heartland VISA.

They’ve already mapped roughly 1,700 potentially eligible counties—home to 58 million Americans.

The Economic Innovation Group, co-founded by Sean Parker, wants at least 100,000 visas a year.

The pitch is explicit:

“In exchange for living in a Heartland Visa community, workers with sufficient earnings will gain permanent residency”

American communities become the destination. Green cards become the incentive.

The proposal targets places struggling with population decline, including rural communities and former industrial centers.

Foreign workers would have to live in a participating area—but could work for an employer located elsewhere.

The think tank also proposes replacing labor certification with an earnings test for the green-card pathway. That would remove the usual labor-market test from this proposed route to permanent residency.

The idea has already reached Capitol Hill.

Republican Senator Todd Young and then-Senator Joe Manchin introduced a version in December 2024. Supporters included AOL co-founder Steve Case, Americans for Prosperity and the Niskanen Center.

County officials would decide whether their communities participate.

EIG continued lobbying for the proposal in 2026.

This is an organized push to turn population decline into a justification for a new immigration program.

https://nataliegwinters.substack.com/p/the-heartland-visa-the-push-for-a

📎 Natalie Winters