Few government programs have affected U.S. IT workers as deeply as H-1B. As Trump takes office, his administration must weigh worker concerns against Elon Musk's agenda.
In 2016, then-President Donald Trump called the H-1B visa program "unfair for our workers" and vowed to end it. As he prepares to return to the White House, Trump reportedly calls it "a great program."
Two forces are pulling Trump in opposite directions. Elon Musk, a top Trump adviser, founder of SpaceX, and founder and CEO of Tesla, views unrestricted access to foreign workers as vital to U.S. innovation. Trump's core Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters see the H-1B program as a tool to import cheap labor and replace U.S. IT workers. They want it gone.
Trump is going to give both sides part of what they want. The Trump administration's concerns about the H-1B program stem from the anger it has caused U.S. workers. But Trump remains sympathetic to the tech industry and its need for foreign talent.
H-1B allows unfair labor practices
Trump must navigate an immigration policy challenge that has subjected U.S. workers to egregious labor practices.
In 2015, six months before Trump launched his first White House run, Southern California Edison cut about 500 IT workers. The employees I interviewed were livid and felt betrayed. I broke that story and another four months later about an offshoring contract that replaced Disney IT workers. One worker told me that the company had flown in some foreign replacements just a day earlier.
After the recession of 2008 and 2009, CIOs grew increasingly comfortable with offshoring and accelerated the movement of workers overseas. No IT job was safe. In September 2016, I reported on the University of California cutting IT workers at its San Francisco campus and outsourcing the work to an India-based IT firm. This decision and others drew protest from lawmakers, such as U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who said the H-1B program "is meant to supplement -- not replace -- the American workforce."
In every case, IT workers struggled to understand how the U.S. government could run an immigration program that cost them their jobs. Their ability to protest was limited: They trained visa holders as a condition of severance and signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
In a 2016 Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee hearing, a photograph showed American flags hung outside the cubicles at Northeast Utilities (now Eversource) -- a silent protest against the offshoring of jobs. Former Sen. and then-Chair Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is seated next to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Siliencing U.S. workers with NDAs
The NDAs had some IT workers afraid of testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee in 2016 on offshore outsourcing. At the request of a Senate committee staffer, I put some of the laid-off workers in touch with the committee.
While IT workers were silenced by NDAs, the tech industry lobbied Washington for more H-1B visas. In one revealing document made public by Norm Matloff, a University of California, Davis computer science professor and H-1B critic, the industry claimed, "H-1B workers complement -- instead of displace -- U.S. workers."
During his 2016 campaign, Trump highlighted the H-1B issue, inviting Disney workers not bound by NDAs to speak at his rallies. It also came up in candidate debates.
Trump's disorganized first-term approach
Once elected, Trump failed to make any major changes to the H-1B program. Instead of ending the program, the administration implemented piecemeal reforms that raised denial rates and increased employer costs. While these changes created headaches for immigration attorneys and tech firms, they didn't change the program. This disappointed some of the IT workers I spoke to. But there's another part of this story that gets missed.
H-1B workers complement -- instead of displace -- U.S. workers.
'Facts You Can Use To Prove That High-Skilled Immigration is Good for America's Economy' handout
In the final months of his first term, Trump proposed prioritizing H-1B visas based on wages. Instead of a random lottery, applications would be ranked by pay, which would enable tech companies such as Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google a way to secure visas just by offering higher wages. But the proposal came too late; Trump lost the election before finalizing the regulation.
This time, Trump can turn to a Republican-controlled Congress to seek H-1B reform or replace the program entirely. He might find bipartisan support from key lawmakers within the Senate Judiciary Committee committee, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chair; and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., likely the ranking member. Both support provisions to protect U.S. workers from displacement by foreign labor.
Trump has tech nervous
MAGA critics believe the U.S. produces enough domestic STEM workers. However, with foreign nationals comprising more than 50% of science and engineering graduate students in the U.S., it's impossible to imagine Congress or Trump hurting access to foreign workers who graduate from U.S. schools.
But Trump has the tech industry nervous, fearing he will again increase H-1B visa denials and create processing delays. His first-term tactics were sloppy and came too late for meaningful reform. This time, with more experienced advisers, he's unlikely to repeat those mistakes. He will either achieve significant H-1B reform or leave a legacy as someone who told both sides what they wanted to hear.
Patrick Thibodeau is an editor at large for TechTarget Editorial who covers HCM and ERP technologies. He's worked for more than two decades as an enterprise IT reporter.
