Executive Director, The Institute for Sound Public Policy; Founder, U.S. Tech Workers
The long-simmering debate over H-1B visas broke out into the mainstream over Christmas in a dispute that erupted over the appointment of Sriram Krishnan as Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence to President-elect Donald Trump. Krishnan was born and raised in India and arrived in the U.S. via the L-1 visa when Microsoft transferred him from their India office, and he is a vocal supporter of expanding immigration, particularly from India. When his position was announced, Trump's MAGA base erupted in a firestorm of criticism, enraged with what they saw as a betrayal by the tech world's elite of the base. The criticism quickly expanded from Krishnan to three recent Silicon Valley converts to President Trump: Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who all voiced support for Krishnan, H-1B visas, and hiring foreign workers over American ones. What followed was a ten-day battle of words, as former allies became bitter opponents, and the issue of H-1B visas took center stage in a broader debate about the future of American industry and its relationship with tech giants.
Of course, the working-class Americans who voted Trump into office on a promise to reduce immigration, legal and illegal, are right: Whether it's illegal migrants crossing the border or "high-skilled" tech workers, immigration hurts America's workers.
It's indisputable that Silicon Valley's use of the H-1B visa program is not a mechanism to bring in the best and the brightest but a tool for obtaining cheap foreign labor. Over the years, the program was often exploited to replace American workers, some even forced to train their visa replacements before being laid off as part of their severance agreement. Musk and Sacks' defense failed to resonate because it was nonsense.
The data reveals that H-1B visas are frequently used to bring in ordinary workers filling routine jobs at much lower wages than their American counterparts. Even Musk's own company, Tesla, has been using the visa to source cheap labor. Furthermore, a significant portion of the H-1B visa program's sponsorship comes from Indian IT outsourcing companies, which are not driving innovation but enabling U.S. companies to outsource entire departments to these outsourcing companies, who eventually offshore these U.S. jobs to low-labor cost countries like India.
In short, U.S. companies, ranging from insurance and financial firms to Silicon Valley giants have found guest worker visa programs like the H-1B to be a convenient way to source cheap labor and maintain a compliant workforce. These workers are predominantly sourced from India, where both the workers and the Indian government benefit from the arrangement. Indian visa workers are often promised Green Card sponsorship in exchange for their loyalty to their employers, while the Indian government enjoys substantial remittances sent back by these workers, which constitute a significant portion of the country's GDP.
Some of the tech elites claimed that America's dependency on foreign workers is due to America's failing education system. But this ignores that our country still produces the best and brightest talent, even within a flawed education system that poorly invests in far too many working-class American students. The U.S. consistently ranks near the top in international educational assessments for math and science, and new research shows that American computer science graduates are outperforming their counterparts from countries like China, Russia, and India, particularly when international students are excluded from the data. It's simply not true that there's a "shortage" of STEM talent in the U.S.
All of which is to say, legal immigration is hurting Americans just as much as illegal immigration.
During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was keenly aware of how legal immigration was being used by elites to suppress American wages and replace workers. On August 3, 2020, I met with him in the Cabinet Room along with twelve Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) IT workers whose jobs were in the process of being outsourced to H-1B visa-dependent consulting firms. During the meeting, President Trump fired the Chairman and one of the board directors of the TVA, and Jeff Lyash, its CEO, called the White House and informed Trump he would rescind his decision to outsource the jobs. And just like that, over 200 union IT jobs were saved.
Additionally, he was the first president to make real H-1B visa reform happen, with a rule change that would have handed out H-1B visas based on the highest offered salary, not a random lottery. It was undone by the Biden administration.
However, after certain tech elites joined his coalition, Trump's stance began to shift, creating a disconnect with his voter base. Trump has issued contradictory arguments, calling for the deportation of illegal immigrants while also advocating for increased legal immigration to fill jobs he claims will be returning. His "staple-a-Green Card to a college diploma" snafu on the ALL IN podcast sparked significant backlash, especially as Silicon Valley has ramped up H-1B visa use while undergoing mass layoffs.
Both his base and many Americans across the political spectrum are seeing through the tech elites' arguments, and if Trump doesn't recognize this quickly, he risks reversing his own policy wins regarding the H-1B visa -- and betraying the very Americans who put him in office.
Kevin Lynn is the Executive Director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy and the founder of U.S. Tech Workers.