Trump targets high-tech’s H-1B work-visa hiring tool
(This executive order would) “create a similar chaos to the travel ban.” Sam Adair, immigration lawyer
President SAN FRANCIS CO Trump’s relationship with Silicon Valley has always been volatile at best, but it seems things soon may get even more contentious.
Administration officials have drafted a new executive order aimed at overhauling, among other things, the H-1B work-visa program that technology companies have long relied on to bring top foreign engineering talent to their U.S.-based locations.
In his news briefing Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the possible executive order on work visas “is part of a larger immigration effort” and stems from “an overall need to look at all of these measures.”
The order, which has yet to come into effect, arrives on the heels of Friday’s controversial immigration ban targeting seven majority-Muslim countries that sparked protests at airports around the country.
That ban, which the White House modified Sunday to not affect green card holders, roiled tech leaders who almost universally denounced the move.
The CEOs of Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb and Tesla Motors noted the policy was affecting their own employees working here legally, and would jeopardize their competitive quest for talent.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai was among the first to condemn the order, noting that it immediately stranded nearly 200 of his employees abroad.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky offered free housing to anyone displaced by the ban, while Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a Facebook post that it was “time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity.”
This new executive order, which was first reported by Bloomberg, takes aim at both H-1B visas, which are capped at 65,000 a year and are set aside for so-called “specialty positions,” as well as visas used for temporary agricultural workers, summer student workers and intracompany transfers.
Tech-sector stocks were down 1% on Monday’s news.
The order is aimed at ensuring that “officials administer our laws in a manner that prioritizes the interests of American workers and — to the maximum degree possible — the jobs, wages and well-being of those workers,” according to a copy of the document provided to USA TODAY.
This executive order would “create a similar chaos to the travel ban,” says immigration lawyer Sam Adair.
“It would be incredibly disruptive to what is a natural part of the recruitment process” for the tech industry, universities, hospitals and biotech, he says.
That process begins April 1, when the annual application process for H-1B visas starts.
But Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of law at Cornell University and expert on immigration law, cautions that the order is only a draft and that it does not set out specific changes to the H-1B visa program, only suggests that it be examined with the thought of what’s best for American workers.
While there have been calls to set a specific wage for H1-B workers so that they do not undercut U.S. workers, it’s not something the president can do unilaterally, Yale-Loehr says.
Current H-1B regulations require that those granted the visa have at least a bachelor’s degree and must be paid the prevailing wage.
“There have been allegations that foreigner workers are coming in at lower wages, if they’re doing that that is violating the current statue,” he says.
H-1B visas are used by tech companies, by hospitals looking to hire doctors, especially in medically underserved areas, and by school districts looking to hire language teachers when U.S. teachers are not available.
Technology companies are in an ongoing struggle to hire computer-science professionals to power their companies.
Executives often claim that they must look overseas because there is a shortage of homegrown math and science graduates.
Critics charge that tech firms lack diversity because they reflexively look to hire white and Asian males and overlook a growing pipeline of women and people of color who are developing programming skills.
Foreign tech workers could “find employment in other countries with more attractive immigration laws and compete against us,” says Mark Koestler, business immigration partner at Kramer Levin. “If we turn away professionals who seek H-1B status, we will lose many future entrepreneurs who will create future jobs for Americans in the United States.”