Visas for guest workers could boost high-tech and U.S. jobs

Two Simple Reforms Make H-1B Visas Great Again

Hal Salzman Edited by Dan Bergano

Just in time for the holiday season, an internal battle over the meaning of “America First” has erupted with the inauguration of the Trump administration. The melee pitted demands for more highly skilled foreign guest workers against claims that foreign guest workers pushed Americans to the back of the hiring line.

The latest uproar began on Christmas, when Trump supporter billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social network X, “There are so many super talented engineers and super motivated people in America. There are too few,” he wrote. He called for more H-1B workers to replace these overly complacent and under-qualified Americans. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, a former Trump opponent turned ally, responded: “Before we look elsewhere, we have to invest in Americans first.”

Arguments are new, but arguments are not. Researchers have debated the impact of the expansive and growing H-1B visa program for technology guest workers for decades. Tech executives like Mr. Musk say tens of thousands more workers are needed. But over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of experienced U.S. technology workers have been laid off, including some of the 15,000 fired by Mr. Musk, and have since been replaced by guest workers. Some people point out that it was replaced by .

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But there are ways to get top talent to work in the United States without hurting workers’ wages and opportunities by tightening visa restrictions and eliminating exploitative education programs.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s H-1B visa program provides companies with up to 65,000 nonimmigrant work visas annually for guest workers with specialized skills. Typically defined as requiring a bachelor’s degree related to the proposed field of employment. An additional 20,000 will go to master’s degree holders and above, and an unlimited number will go to universities and non-profit organizations to hire foreign lab technicians, scientists, technical workers, professors, and postdocs. There is. In 2023, the agency issued a total of approximately 120,000 visas. In addition, there is an even larger STEM OPT (Optional Practical Training) program that grants graduating international students a three-year work permit in STEM fields. The STEM field can be anything that the university defines as “STEM” (like New York University’s drama, therapy, and gaming for master’s studies). These two programs swim in an alphabet soup of visas that provides U.S. employers with more than 700,000 highly skilled guest workers annually.

The technology industry scoops up about two-thirds of these visas and has continued to do so for decades. They rely on guest workers for the majority of their new hires, probably 70 to 80 percent of their entry-level employees. Unlike other visas, the H-1B visa is tied to an employer, making the worker what is often referred to as an “indentured servant” with limited mobility. This undermines their market power in wage negotiations, leaving them with abusive working conditions and protesting wage theft. Employers do not have to prove a labor shortage or search for U.S. workers first. In fact, it is perfectly legal for employers to exclude citizens and “green card” permanent residents alike from consideration. Workers in the United States are not a protected class under antidiscrimination laws. It was only last year that Cognizant, a leading IT guest worker employer, lost a new lawsuit accusing it of discriminating in favor of one ethnic group, Indian workers, who were most frequently employed on H-1B visas. be.

If you look at the educational backgrounds and jobs held by the majority of guest workers, it is hard to say that they have the talent that is difficult to find. Most work for software outsourcing and consulting companies, doing important but innovative work. And most computer science guestworkers who graduate from U.S. universities with advanced degrees come from low-ranking or unranked programs that are comprised of about 80 to 100 percent foreign students. In other words, universities are getting into the game of profiting from guest workers through master’s degree programs that are low to operate but expensive for students. These serve as labor market portals for international students and lucrative profit centers for universities.

Two simple reforms could give the technology industry access to global talent while minimizing job losses for domestic workers. It would also encourage investment in American education and training.

First, guest worker visas, including H1-B, should only be issued to workers who are paid the top 15 percent of wages in each industry and occupational group. Second, work visas should only be granted to graduates from the top 15 percent of each class of workers entering the country through OPT. Both policies are reasonable and relatively easy to implement and monitor. Employers and universities already report most of the required data to federal agencies. And they address both key concerns of rhetorical combatants.

It is true that the proportion of “highly talented” and “highly motivated” workers is much smaller than the top 15% of the workforce. In other words, these limits are enough to satisfy Musk’s need to fill innovative technology development jobs.

Restricting guest worker permits and visas to foreign students who graduate in the top 15 percent of their classes at U.S. universities would address two concerns. First, students would be ranked alongside their domestic peers, providing some measure of academic ability. Second, universities will no longer be able to operate diploma mills that target and exploit foreign students. For these students, there is a risk that they will not be able to obtain a work permit if they attend a university where the proportion of foreign students exceeds 10-15%. This would encourage a wider range of universities to attend, attracting higher-achieving students to lower-tier schools. To maintain this lucrative population, universities must recruit large numbers of domestic students and, importantly, support them through graduation. This is because if the dropout rate is high, the number of domestic students will decrease, and as a result, the proportion of foreign students who can enter the top 15% will decrease. (top percentile) that motivates students to help domestic students graduate.

Employers will also need to recruit more broadly and invest in domestic education to retain foreign graduates eligible for work permits. The small number of foreign graduates allows employers to compete for workers rather than relying on aid from the government, which has a rich supply of guest workers willing to accept below-market wages. It will be like this. This could draw talented workers into the technology industry, rather than losing them to Wall Street, which doesn’t advance science and engineering. Regional wage adjustments could encourage industries that employ these high-wage, high-skilled workers to locate higher-wage operations in lower-cost U.S. cities and towns.

I estimate that these simple reforms would reduce the current population of eligible H-1B applicants by 90 percent, which is frustrating Haley. Doing so would allow tens of thousands of guest worker visas to be issued under the current cap, allowing the tech industry to hire world-class talent, while also allowing these companies to access a large supply of U.S. talent. will be encouraged to make use of it.

To use the market as a guide to attract global talent, rather than falling under the influence of the industries that spend the most on lobbyists or fill the zone with applications that exploit the system. Let’s be honest about guest worker visa reform. With these straightforward reforms, we can support our legitimate goals of attracting hard-to-find global talent and investing in our nation’s rich supply of “super bright” students and workers. These strategic reforms will provide real opportunities for U.S. workers, particularly underrepresented minorities, in the technology workforce and will help groups united by anti-worker expansionists and anti-immigration restrictionists. It would similarly cut Diaz’s knot. This is something the industry should be “very ambitious” about.

This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. scientific american.