Firms can hire foreigners using the short-term visa program. Does that hurt American workers?
What is an H-1B visa?
It’s a visa that allows skilled foreigners to work temporarily in the U.S., and it’s become a flash point in the debate around immigration. Created by Congress in 1990, the H-1B program allots 65,000 visas a year for companies to hire workers in high-demand fields for three years, with 20,000 more available to workers with at least a master’s degree. More than 500,000 H-1B holders are currently living in the U.S., well over half of them working in computing or related fields. Silicon Valley CEOs say that’s because they can’t find trained Americans to fill vacancies—an assertion in dispute among those with President Trump’s ear. When Elon Musk, who uses the program to hire Tesla workers, recently defended it, former White House adviser Steve Bannon accused him of attempting to impose “techno-feudalism on a global scale.” Yet H-1B critics aren’t all MAGA nativists: Sen. Bernie Sanders recently called the visa holders “low-wage indentured servants” who displace American workers. In fact, says University of California, San Diego sociology professor John Skrentny, both sides have a point. “The H-1B visa is very important for attracting the best and brightest,” he said. “At the same time, the H-1B visa is used for cheap labor.”
Who gets such visas?
The vast majority of recipients hail from India. In 2022, for example, a whopping 73 percent of H-1B visas went to Indians, 12.5 percent to Chinese nationals, and the rest to other nationalities. Companies operating in the U.S. must apply on behalf of each worker, but they might not get lucky: There are four to five times as many applicants as slots, and visas are disbursed by lottery. Many recipients are graduates of U.S. colleges. While they don’t need the extraordinary skills required for an EB-1 “Einstein” visa, they must have at least a bachelor’s-level education. Once approved, they must remain with their sponsoring employer; if let go, they have 60 days to find a new sponsor or face deportation. And they can only re-up the visa for one additional three-year term before having to return to their home country for a year and then reapply.
Why are the visas so coveted?
An H-1B worker’s salary—the median was $118,000 in 2023—often far exceeds what’s typical in their home country. And the visa is often the first step toward securing a green card to allow permanent U.S. residency. Employers like Amazon and Google, which are prolific users of the program, say it benefits the U.S. economy too, because companies can access a wider pool of talent. Research has shown that firms that hire more H-1B workers file more patents, and a 2024 Census Bureau study found that these workers were linked with so much growth for their firms that they spurred the creation of more jobs. For the smallest firms, the increase in productivity allowed hiring capacity to double.
Is there a downside?
Critics say the program does hurt American workers, because certain companies seem to prefer to hire from abroad. Indian-owned firms Infosys and Tata, both among the top five hirers of H-1B visas, bring in at least 40 percent of their U.S. workforce from outside, mostly from India. Outsourcing and IT-staffing firms, too, use a disproportionate amount, perhaps because, as a 2024 Bloomberg investigation found, outsourcing firms can flood the lottery with entries from their vast foreign workforces, while IT-staffing firms often cheat by submitting multiple entries per worker. The biggest companies often hire at low wages: At Amazon and Microsoft in 2019, three-fourths of H-1B workers were in the two lowest salary bands. Worse, some firms have been caught laying off U.S. citizens to replace them with H-1Bs. In one infamous case at Disney in 2015, Americans were forced to train their cheaper replacements. Then, too, such workers are at risk of exploitation.
How are they exploited?
Since the visa workers can’t change employers, they have no recourse if they’re mistreated. Many have seen their wages stolen, their hours jacked up, their working conditions degraded. An Economic Policy Institute study found that one outsourcing firm, India-based HCL Technologies, stiffed its H-1B workers of $95 million in wages each year. Some firms lure IT workers to the U.S., pocket their documents, and warehouse them in overcrowded apartments. Even for well-treated workers, a layoff can lead to a desperate scramble to accept any offer before the 60-day deadline.
Is the system being reformed?
A bipartisan group of senators has proposed legislation that would force firms that want visas to prove they tried to hire a U.S. worker first. Other options under discussion include better enforcement of lottery rules and more oversight of wages. But tech leaders say the real problem is that Americans don’t have the skills they need. U.S. science and math test scores trail those of other nations, and most graduate-level computer science students in U.S. colleges are foreign-born.
What will Trump do?
It’s hard to say. In his first term, Trump approved a host of restrictions on H-1B arrivals and ultimately blocked them completely. This term he has Stephen Miller, foe of any form of immigration, back on staff. Still, now that he’s cozied up to tech billionaires, he has moderated his tone, saying he has “always liked” the H1-B system. (He has also confused it with H-2B, which he’s used to hire hospitality staff at his golf clubs.) For now, said immigration lawyer Kelly Fortier, “We’re telling our clients to just expect the unexpected.”
A dead end for Indians
For the three-quarters of H-1B workers who come from India, the dream of American citizenship is just out of reach. Only 7 percent of green cards can be assigned to immigrants from any one country each year, and there are already 1.2 million Indians waiting, a figure set to double by 2030. That leaves Indian H-1B workers and their families stuck in limbo. Visa holders’ spouses, who are often highly educated themselves, tend to get an H-4—nicknamed the “involuntary housewife visa”—which bars them from working for a year. Some Indian green-card hopefuls simply give up. “I was dying internally,” said 31-year-old Atal Agarwal, who quit his visa job as an AI project manager for a San Francisco firm last year and moved back to New Delhi. “Every day, I felt like my dreams were being crushed.”
