Major tech companies are warning some of their employees to not leave the U.S. amid mounting delays and cancellations in visa appointments.
Tighter restrictions for visa holders and applicants are wreaking havoc in the tech industry, stranding some workers abroad as the State Department implements new vetting rules for the H-1B visa program and U.S. consulates and embassies work to adjust. The program, which was designed to temporarily bring high skilled workers into the U.S., is primarily used by tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Google. Many of them, through legal counsel, sent out memos to staffers cautioning against international travel if they require a new stamp to re-enter the country.
This move targeting legal immigration comes as part of the Trump administration's ongoing aim to root out what it says is widespread fraud and tighten standards for who is allowed into the country.
In September, the White house said the program has strayed from its original purpose, and is being "deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor."
"The program is rigged to be anti-worker," Howard University Professor Ron Hira told Scripps News. "It's bad for both the H-1B workers who don't have the same rights as an American worker would have. It's that for the American workers who are being forced to compete with those guest workers, the H1B, workers."
"In reality, employers are using it indiscriminately and because the rules are written so poorly, employers logically from a business point of view prefer H-1B workers over American workers because they're controllable," Hira added. so the employer holds their work permit and therefore their legal status in the U.S. And secondly, H- 1B workers can be paid lower wages than American workers," he added. "So if they ask the worker to jump, the worker is going to say, how high? Because if the worker gets laid off, they're going to have to leave the country."
While companies issued travel warnings to workers still in the country, those who already have gone home to renew their visa during the holiday season are now left in the lurch. For millions of visa applicants, holders and their families, the expanded vetting process means delays that could extend up to a year.
Under a "continuous vetting" process, visa applicants and holders' online presence will face increasing scrutiny. They are being asked to make all of their social media profiles public as the State Department said they are looking for language suggesting "hostile attitudes" toward the U.S., hate speech, and links to or endorsement of terrorist groups.
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While the new rules for H1-B visas are being hailed by supporters as a way to look out for U.S. workers, some policy experts argue it could hurt recruitment for high-skilled talent as well as innovation in the U.S.
"When companies go and try to recruit on college campuses, they find over 70 percent of the full-time graduate students in key fields like electrical engineering are international Students So it's not really individuals being hired instead of Americans, they're being hired in addition," Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, told Scripps News.
"If you look at something like artificial intelligence, America wants to be a leader and our companies wanna be leaders. Why not get the best talent? The same way sports teams do. I mean the Dodgers would not have won the World Series without having about four or five of the top immigrant baseball players in the world on their team," Anderson said.
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