Explained: Indians and the H-1B visa

The outrage of the MAGA crowd — the most vocal supporters of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — was directed specifically towards the H-1B visa program, which allows American businesses to employ “skilled” foreign nationals, and which has been a highly desired pathway for Indians to migrate to the US.

The criticism of H-1B visas, however, was met with strong pushback from within the Trump camp, including from the likes of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the two chairs of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the incoming administration.

Here is a brief overview of the controversy that has divided the American right, and the H-1B visa program at its heart.

Immigration discourse in US

Immigration is one of the most polarising political issues in the US. According to a YouGov poll from October, 14.6% registered voters felt it was the most important issue in the (then) upcoming election. This number was only 2.1% in 2012.

Much of the election-time anti-immigration rhetoric focused on low-skilled labour migration. Besides the intrinsic racism, this rhetoric is fuelled by the belief that such immigration depresses wages, and takes away jobs that would have otherwise gone to the American working class — which has long been hit by high unemployment, low wages, inflation, a housing crisis, and other economic problems.

Trump has successfully cashed in on such sentiments, promising to make conditions better for the average working class American by curbing immigration. The current controversy involves many of the same themes as Trump’s “Mexicans-are-stealing-American-jobs” rhetoric — only this time in the context of immigration into the US of skilled personnel for higher paying jobs.

Visa for ‘skilled’ migrants

The H-1B visa program allows American employers to hire immigrant workers in occupations that require “a high level of skill” and “at least a bachelor’s degree”, according to the US Department of Labour.

The program was started in 1990, with the intention of helping “employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the US workforce by authorising the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorised to work in the United States”.

An H-1B visa can be issued for a maximum of six years at a stretch, after which the visa holder has to either leave the US for a period of at least 12 months before returning, or apply for and receive permanent residence (“Green Card”).

Currently, there is an annual numerical limit (regular cap) of 65,000 new statuses/ visas under this program each fiscal year, with an extra 20,000 visas available to those with a master’s degree or higher from a US university.

However, not all H-1B petitions are subject to the annual cap. The number of petitions approved by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of the US Department of Homeland Security, is thus far higher than the annual cap. (See Chart 1).

Notably, petitions for “continuing employment” do not fall under the cap. In the fiscal year 2023, for instance, USCIS approved 118,948 petitions for initial employment, and 267,370 petitions for continuing employment. Those seeking employment at higher education institutions or nonprofit entities affiliated to such institutions, nonprofit research organisations, or government research organisations are also eligible to be exempted from the cap.

Contours of H-1B debate

People born in India are the largest beneficiaries of the H-1B program. Data from the US government show that Indians account for more than 70% of all H-1B petitions approved each year since 2015. People born in China come a distant second, hovering at the 12-13% mark since 2018. (See Chart 2).

It is this dominance of Indians that seems to have caught the attention of nativist MAGA Republicans, who have extended the logic they apply while arguing against low-skilled labour migration by Mexicans and Central Americans to Indians coming to the US to work in the tech industry.

Central to this argument is the claim that the H-1B program, meant to attract top talent from around the world to the US, is misused by tech corporations to staff their low-to-mid level workforce for much lesser pay than what Americans would demand. When someone like Musk argues in favour of H-1B visas saying “there is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent”, critics respond that the problem is not the dearth of American talent but the fact that tech companies see it as “too expensive to hire”.

There is some truth to this claim. Nearly 70% of H-1B petitions approved for Indian professionals in US fiscal year 2023 were for salaries below $100,000 per annum, an analysis of data on 60,000 approvals from USCIS obtained by Bloomberg showed. For context, the median salary for IT professionals in the United States was $104,420 in May 2023, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Around 25% of petition approvals were for salaries between $100,000 and $150,000, and only 5% were for salaries above $150,000, according to the analysis of USCIS data by The Indian Express. (See Chart 3).

On Sunday, after coming out in support of H-1B visas, Musk said “the program is broken and needs major reform”. “Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically,” Musk said in a post on X.

That said, industry insiders maintain that H-1B visas are critical to bridging the skills gap in the US and that wages are market-driven. Chinese and Indians dominate the STEM fields worldwide. According to data presented by the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) in 2020, China (3.57 million) and India (2.55 million) boast the highest number of STEM graduates in the world, significantly more than the US (820,000).