| US tech giants made a bargain last year: tens of millions of dollars to Trump’s presidential campaign in exchange for access to the president and policies that promoted their industry’s growth. If you count in Elon Musk, the number rises to hundreds of millions. However, Trump’s imposition of a new fee on a visa heavily used by tech threatens the compact.My colleague Johana Bhuiyan reports:Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Friday that would impose an annual $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, dealing a potentially major blow to the US tech industry, which relies more than any other sector of the US economy on immigrants who hold these visas.Trump’s threat to crack down on H-1B visas has become a major flashpoint with the tech industry. Roughly two-thirds of jobs secured through the H-1B program are computer-related, government figures show, but employers also use the visa to bring in engineers, educators and healthcare workers.After the initial report, Amazon, Microsoft and Google urged employees abroad to return to the US immediately and keep any dependents from traveling abroad. The consequences of the fee, which took effect at 12am on 21 September, were unclear, and their human resources departments were worried. The White House later clarified that the fee would only apply to new applicants, rather than burdening current visa holders with a yearly six-figure fee, and would not require $100,000 for reentry. The US commerce secretary had repeatedly said on camera the fee would be levied annually.The penalty threatens one nation’s immigrants enormously: India. Roughly 700,000 H-1B visa holders reside in the United States. Of those, 71% were born in India. In a distant second, Chinese immigrants make up between 10% and 15%. Other notable facts: nearly three-quarters of H-1B visa holders are men, and their median salary is about $120,000. The price of bringing these workers to US soil, should the penalty withstand inevitable court challenges, may be too high for their employers.‘Afraid of our talent’: India hits back against Trump’s H-1B visa fee hikeThe fee amounts to a tariff on talent, much like the president’s duties on goods from nearly all the US’s trading partners. The president is directing his propensity for protectionism towards specialized jobs the same way he did imports from Vietnam. And like those tariffs on goods, the logic of his employee fees is difficult to compute: The US has not built up the domestic manufacturing capacity to assemble smartphones from case to camera, so it does not follow that the president erects barriers to bringing in parts made elsewhere. Likewise, the US does not boast the robust pipelines training technical workers that India and China do. The gap leaves the US’ most successful companies with a shortage of workers they need to create their products and provide their services. Enter the H-1B. Supporters of the program, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, say it brings in highly skilled workers essential to filling talent gaps and keeping firms competitive. Musk, himself a naturalized US citizen born in South Africa, once held an H-1B visa.In December of last year, Trump expressed his support for the program.“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” the president told the New York Post.Will Trump’s talent tariff encourage the American education system to produce more students with technical skills, as he hopes to reshore technical manufacturing? Perhaps not while he wages war on the nation’s universities, which train many of the international students who go on to hold H-1B visas and fuel American companies. |
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