Richmond:

As newly inaugurated President Donald Trump readies his immigration crackdown, his allies in his Republican Party have splintered over policies surrounding US worker visas intended to go to specialty occupations like the tech industry.

The row over so-called H-1B visas is pitting Silicon Valley-aligned Trump allies like X CEO Elon Musk, who favor the program, against opponents like former White House strategist Steve Bannon, many of whom want curbs on overall immigration levels – legal and illegal – with Trump’s return to office.

How have H-1Bs ended up in the fray? Here’s what to know:

What are H-1Bs and how do they differ from other U.S. work visa programs?

The H-1B visa program is reserved for people from other countries who are employed in specialty occupations in the United States, frequently in the technology field.

They can include software engineers, tech program managers and other IT professionals.

People in the United States on H-1Bs can extend beyond an initial six-year time frame – three years plus a three-year extension – if a green card application has been filed.

Under the terms of their visas, workers who are laid off face the prospect of having to leave the country within 60 days unless they can find another job or manage to change their immigration status.

Other work programs include H-2A visas, which are for temporary agricultural workers, and H-2B visas for seasonal non-agricultural workers.

Tahmina Watson, an immigration lawyer based in Seattle, Washington, suggested a new category for a “startup” visa for people who want to come to the country to start new companies.

“The startup visa is something I have advocated for almost two decades,” she said. “I do think our visa system is in desperate need of reform.”

What are Trump allies saying about H-1Bs?

Musk has defended the program and vowed to “go to war” over it after other Trump supporters criticized the president’s appointment of Indian-American entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan as a senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence and argued the H-1B program favors foreign-born workers over Americans.

Musk has had Trump’s ear since the election and is working on the newly constituted Department of Government Efficiency to cut down on spending and perceived waste.

On the other side are people like Bannon, one of the architects of Trump’s 2016 campaign, who has dismissed the H-1B program as a “scam.”

“We’re winning this round, and we’re winning this round pretty big,” Bannon said at a Politico event this month, referring to the H-1B fight. “I think we’ll get Elon there. As soon as I can turn Elon Musk from a techno-futilist to a populist nationalist, we’ll start making real progress.”

Watson said an important takeaway from the national debate is to recognize there is a shortage of talent in the STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – fields that the country needs.

“Recognize and acknowledge that we do not have enough domestic talent that we need, and address both at the same time by allowing skilled immigrants to come in now but also using that policy to mandate that America starts training the next generation,” she said.

What are Trump’s views?

After the initial skirmish, Trump said he favors 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,” he told the New York Post.

Ahead of the inauguration, Trump’s team did not respond to questions about whether he supports the program or plans to push for changes to H-1Bs or other work visa programs.

He sought to restrict them during his first term in office from 2017 to 2021.

Who could be affected by policy changes?

People from India accounted for the vast majority of approved H-1B beneficiaries in 2023, followed by China.

Under the current system, those affected by layoffs in the tech sector can find themselves scrambling to maintain their legal status.

Meta, for example, which has about 72,000 employees, said recently it planned to cut about 5% of its staff.

Watson said people or businesses who depend on H-1Bs might be well-served to tune out the political back-and-forth.

“Do not be deterred by the national rhetoric from using the H-1B if your business needs it,” she said. “I say to a lot of my clients that your business success is your North Star, so do what you need to do.

“For the employees who might be afraid, I’d say if they are working in alignment with their employers, they should not be afraid.”

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Indian-American Republican presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to replace the lottery-based system with meritocratic admission for the H-1B visa programme. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Calling the H-1B visa programme “indentured servitude”, Indian-American Republican presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to “gut” the lottery-based system and replace it with meritocratic admission if he wins the race to the White House in 2024.

The H-1B visa, the much-sought-after among Indian IT professionals, is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.

Mr. Ramaswamy himself has used the visa programme 29 times.

From 2018 through 2023, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved 29 applications for Ramaswamy’s former company, Roivant Sciences, to hire employees under H-1B visas.

Yet, the H-1B system is “bad for everyone involved,” Mr. Ramaswamy was quoted as saying by Politico.

“The lottery system needs to be replaced by actual meritocratic admission. It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I’ll gut it,” he said in a statement, adding that the U.S. needs to eliminate chain-based migration.

“The people who come as family members are not the meritocratic immigrants who make skills-based contributions to this country.”

Mr. Ramaswamy stepped down as chief executive officer of Roivant in February 2021, but remained the chair of the company’s board of directors until February this year when he announced his presidential campaign.

As of March 31, the company and its subsidiaries had 904 full-time employees, including 825 in the U.S., according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

When asked about the mismatch in the Republican presidential hopeful’s policy stance and his past business practices, press secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the role of a policymaker “is to do what’s right for a country overall: the system is broken and needs to be fixed. Vivek believes that regulations overseeing the U.S. energy sector are badly broken, but he still uses water and electricity,” she said in a statement. “This is the same.”

Mr. Ramaswamy, who is himself the child of immigrants, has captured headlines for his restrictionist immigration policy agenda.

He also said he would use military force to secure the border, and that he would deport US-born children of undocumented immigrants.

H-1B visas are highly sought after, and the demand for these workers continues to increase. For fiscal year 2021, U.S. businesses submitted 780,884 applications for just 85,000 available slots, jumping by more than 60 per cent.

Mr. Ramaswamy acknowledged his own experience with immigration during his opening remarks at the first Republican debate in Milwaukee.

“My parents came to this country with no money 40 years ago,” he said. “I have gone on to found multi-billion-dollar companies.” Ramaswamy’s stance on H-1B visas is reminiscent of the 2016 Trump campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump, who has also hired a number of foreign workers under H-1B visas for his businesses, took a hardline stance on these foreign workers before later softening his rhetoric.

As president, Trump temporarily suspended new work visas and blocked hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from U.S. employment, as part of his sweeping effort to limit the number of immigrants coming into the U.S.

Every year, the U.S. gives 65,000 H-1B visas which are open to all and 20,000 to those with advanced U.S. degrees.

In July, Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi introduced a bill proposing to double the annual intake of highly skilled foreign workers on H-1B work visas coveted by Indian professionals.

The bill also seeks to double the number of H-1B visas available annually from 65,000 to 130,000 to allow American employers, including in critical technology sectors, to draw the best talent from around the world. Currently, nearly three-fourths of H-1B visas go to Indian professionals.