Reed’s view
As Semafor scooped Friday, US Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is urging the White House to reform the H-1B program to cut down on abuse. The White House seems to be amenable to that idea, with Assistant Attorney Gen. Harmeet Dhillon investigating potential H-1B transgressions at the big tech companies she is famous for fighting.
The reason members of both parties want to see reform is that the H-1B program was essentially taken over by consulting firms that filled the slots with workers who were there simply because they’d accept lower wages. Everybody thinks of H-1B workers destined for big tech companies, but that’s a misnomer. Many of them were just low-wage workers somewhere in the middle of the country contributing to sub-par software for non-tech sectors like financial services.
H-1B reform would actually help technology companies by opening more slots for truly talented engineers — like the ones presenting at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference this week, where it’s impossible to ignore how many of the top AI minds were born outside the United States. It’s in the country’s interest to make it exceedingly easy for companies to recruit the best talent from all over the world, while making it difficult for consulting firms to import cheap labor that adds little value to the innovation economy.
Despite everyone essentially agreeing on this, the Trump Administration seems to be working against its own interests and the country’s by using heated rhetoric and nonsensical policies seemingly aimed at driving talent away. The latest example came Thursday, when Reuters broke a story about a new cable from the State Department that instructs consulates to dig into the work histories of H-1B applicants for any evidence that they took part in “censorship” at social media companies, and then to deny their applications.
There are officials in the Trump administration, and tech executives close to it, who believe discouraging foreign technologists from coming to the US is counter to the country’s long-term interests. Ironically, they aren’t free to speak up against it — another kind of censorship with more dire consequences than a banned social media account.
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Room for Disagreement
In an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner earlier this year, former immigration official Ken Cuccinelli argued Congress should eliminate the H1-B program entirely. It “is designed to displace middle-class American workers and facilitate the exploitation of cheap foreign labor,” he wrote. “It is time for lawmakers to prioritize American workers, families, and communities.”
Notable
- Economists previously warned that the Trump administration’s proposed $100,000 fee on H-1B visas could hinder US growth: “Investments in artificial intelligence are unlikely to offset the damage caused by the loss of human capital under restrictive immigration policies,” one told The Guardian.