Breitbart Blames Bill And Hillary Clinton For Every Organization With The Word Clinton In It

Breitbart H1-B Attack Blames Clinton Family For Schools, Pharmacies, Catering Organizations

Written by Alex Kaplan

Published

A Breitbart News report misread results from a database to inaccurately claim that Clinton-affiliated organizations requested up to 87 H-1B visas from 2011-2014 in an attempt to criticize Clinton -- a strange line of attack, given that the visa category is uncontroversial and receives bipartisan support. Breitbart News has a history of providing unreliable information to readers, including such journalistic missteps as identifying the wrong person in its reports and incorrectly reading sources.

A March 10 Breitbart News piece by Neil Munro claimed that “Clinton family charities have outsourced many U.S. white-collar jobs to foreign college graduates” by requesting H1-B visas, which allow organizations to recruit and employ highly skilled and specialized foreign professionals in specific occupations. The report cited the website MyVisaJobs.com, where Munro claimed a search of Clinton-affiliated organizations “requested up to 87 H-1B workers”.

However, a search of “Clinton” on the website finds that the 87 number is completely false. Breitbart included organizations that are not affiliated with the Clintons, such as Clinton City Schools and the Mercy Medical Center - Clinton:

Excluding the organizations not connected to the Clintons, the actual number of visa requests from Clinton-connected organizations is 56, or a drop of 36 percent from the misleading number Breitbart reported. Moreover, Breitbart admits the precise number of requests may even be lower, as the total may include duplicate requests.

Breitbart's attack rings especially hollow as  H-1B visas have enjoyed support from both Democrats and Republicans. In fact, increasing the number of H-1B visas was part of the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill that easily passed the U.S. Senate with bipartisan support, as well as another bipartisan-sponsored bill in 2015 that sought to increase the number of visas. Many other international organizations -- including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the American Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, Koch Industries and the Heritage Foundation -- have also used the H-1B visa program.

Breitbart News has a history of unreliability. In January, it claimed Washington Free Beacon founder Michael Goldfarb had criticized Donald Trump in a BBC piece, which clearly referred to a different Goldfarb. In 2014, it attacked President Obama's nominee for attorney general by going after the wrong Loretta Lynch. In 2013, it alleged then-Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel received funding from a group called Friends of Hamas -- an organization that never actually existed. Munro, who authored the Clinton H-1B visa piece, also has history of flawed reporting, claiming in 2012 that President Obama was the lead attorney in a class action discrimination lawsuit regarding home loans that helped trigger the 2008 economic collapse. In fact, Obama had little involvement in the case, and the case was not a contributor to the economic meltdown.