H-1B Visas---No Easy Answers

There has been a lot of talk recently of where the H-1B visa program will go in the Trump administration.

This visa program allows individuals in "speciality occupations" who are not citizens to be permitted to enter the United States to work.

The visa is generally available for up to three years but may be extended for up to an additional three years.

An annual numerical limit of 65,000 new visas is allowed but an additional 20,000 per year are allowed for those with graduate degrees or higher from U.S. colleges. In addition, any H-1B visa holders who works for an institution of higher learning in the U.S,, nonprofit research organizations or government research organizations are not subject to the numerical cap.

All of this aggregates such that there are over 600,000 H-1B visas currently in use today.

There appears to be a division among Trump supporters on what the future of the H-1B program should be.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have argued that the program needs to be expanded to provide for the allowance of more visas for talented immigrant applicants.

MAGA purists argue that there are already too many using the program, the program is being abused, and it is disadvantaging U.S. citizens with similar qualifications.

Donald Trump has sent mixed messages about the program over the years.

He has expressed concerns in the past that there are too many H-1B visas but he has also indicated that he is in favor of allowing more talented immigrants into the country.

What is true is that the Trump administration was much more strict in approving H1-B visas than was the case with either Obama or Biden.

Let's take a deeper look at the H-1B issue to put all of it in better context.

There is one thing that is true about the H-1B program that is the case with almost every government.

It may be well intentioned, and make sense theoretically, but it inevitably gets abused and strays from each original purpose.

That has been the case with H-1B.

This becomes apparent when one looks at the leading sponsors of H-1B applicants.

Four of the top 10 sponsors of H-1B visas are Indian IT outsourcing firms.

Source: https://x.com/RodneyR58127664/status/1863519648601260095

They hire Indian tech employees who will work for less pay than their U.S. counterparts and then mark up the labor costs for the American companies who buy their IT services.

It clearly was not the original intention of the program that a private sector middleman would be reaping such a large benefit from the program.

As is this perspective.

The heavy Indian influence in the H1-B program is readily apparent in looking at the origin countries for H1-B visas.

If this is about the "best and brightest" why is it that 75% of the visas went to Indians and another 12% to Chinese?

Where are the Europeans, the Japanese and the Australians?

Do they not have any talented people who want to come to the United States?

You would also think that with that large number of H1-B visas being given to those from India that they are almost all well-educated and would be products of an excellent college and university background.

However, I found it surprising that India does not have one university in the Global Top 500.

Credit: https://x.com/JeanineT3/status/1875383230855344246/photo/1

It is also interesting that U.S. college seniors in Computer Science actually show more fully developed skills than their counterparts in other countries.

Students in India are actually the worst performers.

However, the problem is that for quite some time the United States has not been graduating nearly enough Computer Science majors compared to the number of new jobs for recent grads.

Some argue that the heavy preponderance of Indians in IT jobs due to the H-1B program is actually depressing the number of native Americans from majoring in Computer Science.

Source: https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/computing-is-the-safe-stem-career-choice-today/

This shortfall is likely to continue into the future as the United States is about to enter a period where there is declining college enrollment due to lower number of individuals turning 18 years of age.

Source: https://hechingerreport.org/the-impact-of-this-is-economic-decline/

This equates to about 650,000 fewer high school graduate per year within the next 15 years.

It also means a couple million fewer potential students attending colleges in each four year period.

Colleges are going to be under even more financial pressure in the future due to this demographic cliff.

However, it also means that it will be increasingly difficult for the United States to have the supply of trained talent necessary to continue to fuel the domestic economy.

It will either require many more U.S students to choose courses of study in the STEM fields than are doing so today or more talent will have to be imported from overseas in programs like H1-B.

There is no easy answer.

It is not hard to see why Donald Trump is concerned about the effects of H1-B on American workers but also understands that we likely need more immigrant talent to fill the jobs of the future.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming debate about immigration reform.