The change that the Donald Trump administration has introduced with the payment of a $ 100,000 commission for H-1B visas has been presented especially as a help to workers born in the United States to opt for jobs in the computer sector and reduce salary abuses related to highly qualified foreign workers who accept lower salaries than premises. But many economists, including one of the co -authors of the report on which the government is supported to impose this rate in prohibitive practice, indicate the net positive contribution of these talent attraction visas for key sectors, the labor market and the immigration system. And now they warn that the measure complicates the country’s future competitiveness in key industries. Visa H-1B was created in 1990, during the presidency of George Bush Father. It usually lasts up to three years extendable, allows the arrival of families and with it you can also manage permanent residence or Green Card. Until now, the commissions associated with their processing have always been reduced and the cost of processing it for companies has been between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars. 73% of those who benefit from first hand of these visas are born in India because they have the profiles currently demanded by the high -tech industry, mainly. Almost 65% of the workers who got it two years ago have work in the computer sector and the employers who most requested that year were Amazon, Cognizant Technologies, Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Google, Microsoft, Apps, Meta and JP Morgan. These companies, most with broad and growing benefits, are also the ones that can most suffer the cost of the new rate that is emerging for start-ups, innovatives, researchers, hospitals and universities. Trump’s government cited in the proclamation with which a 2017 Americans in this sector would have been up to 5.1 % higher and employment could have been 10.8 % higher in 2001. The professor of economy at the University of San Diego, Gaurav Khanna, however, qualifies as «limited» focusing on this situation, since it only affects a type of workers.
«Tariff on talent»
Khanna is one of the co -authors of the study cited by the White House and explains to El País that this visa that now becomes astronomically benefits the entire economy. «It has a very positive impact,» he clarifies. «It benefits the rest, workers in the information technologies sector because when you have more computer scientists, more employees must be hired in companies, more managers, more personnel in human resources and increase opportunities and salaries in the sector.» «The benefits for the economy in general compensate for the cost,» insists Khanna referring to the negative impact on a certain number of specialized workers. It is something that coincides with the American Immigration Council (AIC), who cites a consensus of economists who point out that these foreign workers create new opportunities for the natives because they cover jobs that require specific specialties and that complement others that are needed around them. With them, entrepreneurs often expand their operations within the country, looking for new opportunities in the United States and not in other places. “The idea that we can somehow reduce the number of H-1B visa applicants who arrive in the United States and then simply reallocate those jobs-which would otherwise have been for them-to US workers are not based on a solid economic policy,” says Jorge Lowele, director of programs and strategy AIC «That kind of thought of one by one, which means that there is a fixed number of jobs in the United States at a given time and that any job obtained by an immigrant takes off a native worker, is incorrect, does not take into account economic growth.» The search for talent outside the country is then presented as an alternative. Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO of the consulting firm Grayhound Research, says that the model of companies with Junior engineers with Visa H-1B has finished and anticipates the transfer of more operations outside the country, in addition to greater automation. For Gogia, the new commission in the visas is a tariff on talent.
A domino effect that begins with the race for AI
Loweree adds that this decision comes at a critical moment because it coincides with the competence for the development of artificial intelligence. «Efforts are being made to innovate and lead in a sector with emerging technology and this is something that will weaken our nation in favor of our global competitors. We are in a technological competition that will determine the balance of powers for generations and this cannot reach at the worse.» Large companies can continue to have these visas, but the start UPS, where the majority of innovation occurs, they will not be able to assume the new cost. And from the AIC it is believed that for the investigation of non -profit companies this commission is devastating. Although there is still a clarification of many aspects of this policy that lit alarms during the weekend. In the event that the use of this visa is dramatically restricted due to the high cost, what these immigrants spend and invest in the economy could also be lost. All this also creates more employment and more production and, therefore, more growth. The immigration expert Daniel Costa, of the Economic Policy Institute, explains that this commission is not a good solution for the problems that exist with this visa. «There will be unwanted consequences, there is a better way to fix the problems,» he says. Critical Costa that the existing rules now do not prevent lower salaries in the sector for those who have this visa, that there are companies that are placement consultants and that there is no real search for native workers to cover the jobs. However, the fact that you have these and other fissures is not fixed with a price increase, it argues. In terms of immigration, Loweree says that this «is a very clear effort to undermine an entire program, rewrite the law to eliminate a category of visa through an executive action and not from Congress.» He adds that the H-1B visa is also a critical tool for the entire employment-based immigration system for allowing access to permanent residence or Green Card. «The number of permanent residences assigned every year for work reasons is so small and has not been updated so long that it no longer reflects the needs of the country or our economy. And, because of that, the waiting lists for those who are in the tail – people who in theory meet the requirements to obtain permanent residence for employment, but waiting for their turn to reach them – are huge,» he says. The H-1B used to be an entrance, but now Trump has erected a fiscal wall to cover it.
