A senior partner at a large U.S. company admits corporations will skirt H-1B restrictions—leaving American graduates behind.
One issue currently dividing conservatives is immigration, particularly regarding the H-1 B visa program.
Many believe that a certain amount of immigration is necessary for U.S. corporations to recruit the best possible engineers, programmers, and so forth. They view the H1-B visa, which facilitates such hiring, as not only a positive good but an economic necessity. Others counter that importing skilled labor takes jobs from American workers and drives down wages, and point to rampant fraud in the program.
Some of those in the latter group were delighted a few months ago when President Trump called for raising the fee for an H1-B visa from $10,000 to $100,000. That will obviously discourage corporations from bringing in as many foreigners and thus decrease the number of H1-B visas issued. But will it also have the desired effect of opening up more jobs for American workers—specifically, American college graduates? Not necessarily.
To bring about change, we need to address the F-1 visa, something for which neither the president nor Congress has shown any appetite.
I recently interviewed a senior partner at a large U.S. consulting firm with offices around the world, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity. We’ll call him “Adam” for the sake of convenience. Adam was previously a partner at one of the Big Four accounting firms, then served as a C-suite executive at two other large American corporations before moving to his current job, where he oversees a large financial operation headquartered in the U.S. but spanning multiple countries.
In his various roles, he has frequently used the H1-B visa to recruit top talent. He admitted, though, that he won’t be doing that as much now, since the cost is so high. But does that mean his company will be hiring more Americans?
According to him, the answer is no. It just means they’ll be outsourcing more of their operations to other countries, where they can hire those people without having to bring them to the U.S. and pay the fee. That means whatever capital the company invests in those workers, in terms of wages and overhead, will go to other countries rather than remaining within the U.S. economy.
Even if they do recruit more graduates from U.S. colleges and universities, he told me, that doesn’t mean they’ll be hiring more Americans. Despite tighter H-1B restrictions, many of their new hires will still be foreign students on F-1 visas, who in the STEM fields are eligible to extend their stay and work in the U.S. for up to three years after graduating.
“Half the people we hire are from another country,” he said. “Universities are bringing in all these students from other countries because they pay full freight. So when we go on campuses to recruit, that’s our pool.”
This is a prime example of corporate greed.