[This post is a condensed version of a RealClearInvestigations article by Steven Edginton; I highly recommend this link for deep analyses of prevalent issues]
US tech workers are at the center of a battle brewing in Washington, DC, over reforming the troubled H-1B visa program, designed to fill highly skilled positions when qualified American workers can’t be found. The controversy pits tough-on-immigration Republicans and some Democrats against the most formidable of opponents – Big Tech, the primary beneficiary of a program considered by critics to be little more than a pipeline of cheap labor.
In the last few decades, the California dream has gone global as US tech firms have filled their ranks and C-suites with employees born in India or Malaysia.
Intel replaced its US executives with Lip-Bu Tan
Microsoft is led by Satya Nadella
Alphabet Inc. by Sundar Pichai
Adobe by ShantanuNarayen;
IBM by Arvind Krishna
YouTube by Neal Mohan;
T-Mobile US by Srinivas Gopalan
According to think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley, two-thirds of Silicon Valley’s nearly 400,000 tech jobs are now held by persons born abroad.
Today, more tech workers were born in India (23%) and China (18%) combined than in the US (34%).
Low-cost Asian talent has clearly helped fuel profits. But the downside to this tech boom is the sidelining of US workers thanks to the H-1B visa program; it's no longer working as intended.
Created in 1990, the federal H-1B program has become a vehicle for employers, in the US tech centers to recruit much cheaper foreign labor at the expense of US tech workers.
The H-1B program spans multiple industries, but it’s overwhelmingly concentrated in tech. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Tata Consultancy, and Google were the biggest visa users., Amazon alone recorded more than 13,000 applications.
The savings from hiring foreign workers hard to resist, e.g., software developers accounts for 38% of all H-1B visa workers. These foreign software developers earn about 30% less than their US counterparts.
These tech jobs pay six figures and the savings quickly add up. Companiescab save nearly $100,000 per worker over six years by hiring an H-1B worker rather than an American. This arrangement redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants.
The H-1B law is vaguely written and easy to exploit. The congressional basis of the law – to fill highly skilled jobs with foreigners if Americans aren’t available – is fiction.
One of the most glaring weaknesses of the law is that most companies using these visas are not required to demonstrate that they were unable to find qualified American workers. Only companies with more than 15% of their workforce on H-1Bs must make efforts to recruit US citizens, e.g., public announcements of open positions.
Companies must pay foreign workers at least the “prevailing wage” , a provision that should reduce the incentive to hire employees from Asia.
But the process of self-reporting is easy to manipulate since salaries are calculated using broad regional averages that don't reflect real technology sector market wages.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reported that when the annual cap of 85,000 new visas was combined with renewals, 2025 was a banner year with 406,348 approved visas. Seventy percent of those visas were issued to Indians, compared to a total of 275,317 visa approvals in 2015.
The Trump administration has now restricted the program. The USCIS announced a new $100,000 fee that companies must pay per new H-1B worker living outside the US. Some immigration experts estimate the fee may lead to a 30% to 50% decline in new visa applications.
Since Tech companies don't want to pay the $100,000 fees, But their workaround is to exploit visas for workers already in the US, e.g., students who transfer from other visa types to H-1Bs, using the Optional Practical Training program to move into the H-1B pipeline without paying that fee.
Critics of these visas point to waves of layoffs, today driven by AI, accompanied by the growth in H-1Bs. The labor shortage is nothing more than a fig leaf.
1) Google fired 951 US workers in 2024, but hired 1,058 new H-1B workers
2) Apple fired 735 US workers in 2024, but hired 864 new H-1B workers
3) Microsoft fired US 3,426 workers from 2022-24, but hired 3,259 new H-1Bs
The Economic Policy Institute reported the top 30 H-1B employers hired more than 34,000 new H-1B workers in 2022 but fired at least 85,000 employees during the same period.
Critics say H-1B visas also provide a captive workforce. Employers can sponsor visa holders for permanent residency, and many workers rely on keeping their jobs in order to remain in the US. This dynamic discourages employees from changing companies or demanding higher wages, similar to Indentured Servitude.
Favoritism contributes to foreign dominance of the tech sector. When foreign-born take on leadership roles, including CEO, they likely tap their own indigenous networks. Professional hiring is a thing of the past, with Indians dominating the system.
A former Google engineer noted that Indian employees help each other share interview questions, creating their own little network.
SOLUTION?
One reform targets the ineffective prevailing wage requirement allowings firms to underpay foreign workers. The refromwould increase the minimum salary requirement for H-1B workers to be much higher than the current pay scale. That would remove the financial incentive to replace US-born workers.
Ro Khanna, the Democratic congressman representing much of Silicon Valley, said on the All-In podcast last year that “there’s definitely abuse [that] needs to be corrected” in the H-1B program. Khanna said a new prevailing wage standard would be a reform he could support.
But such legislation would raise labor costs and be opposed by Big Tech with deep pockets with millions of dollars to influence Congress.
