🌊 Is America Too "Normal"?

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Today we’re cutting through the noise of H-1Bs: Once a visa category no one cared about; today a hot-button political issue – this story covers what they are and why they matter.

Are Americans too “mediocre” and “normal”? Do they spend too much time “hanging out at the mall”? Or have they just been sold out by tech oligarchs?

These questions and others have sparked a great rift within the Republican Party – and could determine how America handles immigration.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush believed the US faced a looming shortage of high-skilled labor. In response, he signed a law that created the H-1B program – an effort to “encourage the immigration of exceptionally talented people, such as scientists, engineers and educators” to the US.

The visa program allowed US employers to hire foreigners to work in “specialty occupations” that require at least a bachelor’s degree, particularly in STEM fields. The visas lasted – and still last – for three years and could be extended for up to six. Today, the US gives out 65,000 H-1B visas annually.

Any nationality is eligible to get an H-1B visa, but one group dominates the pool: Indians. Since 2015, Indians have received more than 70% of all H-1B visas, followed by Chinese, at roughly 12%.

The question is why: Is it because they’re the best employees, or because employers can pay them the least?

In December, President Trump appointed Sriram Krishnan, an India-born venture capitalist, as a senior policy advisor on AI. Krishnan had formerly advocated for bringing more high-skilled foreigners to work in the US, sparking a debate among conservatives.

On the one side were the “America First” Republicans, who said that immigration was a way for companies to avoid paying American workers full salaries. They asked why Americans should have to compete with people from India and China for jobs in their own country.

On the other were many in the tech community, who said that foreign – mainly Indian – workers were vital for American companies’ competitiveness, and that companies didn’t hire them for cheap labor, but because they were better for the job.

Amid this debate, Vivek Ramaswamy – Trump’s then-pick to co-lead the Department of Governmental Efficiency – weighed in: “The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans,” he wrote, “comes down to the c-word: culture.”

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.”

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

“More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of ‘Friends.’ More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’”

America’s culture of “normalcy,” Ramaswamy concluded, “doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent…If we pretend that it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”

Elon Musk – once an H-1B visa holder himself – endorsed the take, arguing that the expertise technology companies demand “simply does not exist in America in sufficient quantity.”

So is that true? What do the data say about why companies hire H-1B labor?

To get one of the 65,000 H-1B visas handed out by the US annually, employers must sponsor immigrants to enter a lottery. That employer must show that the H-1B worker will be paid as much as a domestic worker and that the worker will fill a “specialty” role that is otherwise hard to fill. In 2024, 25% of applicants received H-1B visas.

American rules state that H-1B workers can not “adversely affect the wages or working conditions of similarly employed US workers.” Despite that, some studies have found that H-1B workers regularly receive lower compensation than their American counterparts. One 2020 study found that 60% of H-1B workers had wage levels below the median for the occupation.

Once in a role, visa laws can make it hard for H-1B holders to leave. If the holder quits their job, they are required to find a new job – and a new company to sponsor their visa – within 60 days or return home. While US workers can demand higher wages or threaten to quit, H-1B holders often can’t, at least if they want to remain in the US.

This situation has galvanized opposition to H-1Bs among populists on both sides of the aisle: Bernie Sanders has argued that the main function of the H-1B visa program is “to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad.”

“The top 30 corporations using this program laid off at least 85,000 American workers while they hired over 34,000 new H-1B guest workers,” he wrote in December.

That sentiment has been echoed by many “America First” conservatives, who argue that large tech companies have worked with the government to import cheap labor from overseas, harming American workers.

Yet many of those same conservatives have pushed for the US to shift from a “chain” migration model – where family members can bring their family members – to a “points” one based on skills. The Republican Party incorporated that position into its 2024 party platform, however, it may be these H-1B workers – all of whom have degrees, often in unique fields – who would score the most points.

Tech companies have lobbied aggressively for the H-1B program. They deny it’s about getting cheap labor, but rather about alleviating shortages and recruiting the best talent from a global pool. One 2019 study found that firms employing H-1B holders “were more likely to be associated with new patents and patent citations,” while a 2023 study found that “H-1B lottery wins enable firms to scale up without generating large amounts of substitution away from native workers.”

So some say the companies are hiring the H-1B workers to exploit them and undercut Americans; others say they’re doing it because the H-1B workers are the best.

Meanwhile, India benefits tremendously.

India has sent hundreds of thousands of its people to America, where they receive many multiples of what they would at home and learn at the world’s best companies, bringing money and ideas back to India. That has led the Indian government to vocally support the H-1B program, describing emigration as a patriotic way to develop India and a sign of India’s growing power.

So vital is the H-1B program to India’s interests that Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently offered to preemptively identify and assist in the deportation of undocumented Indians living in the US. Analysts saw that move as a way to pre-empt Trump’s cutting back on H-1Bs.

But do Americans benefit?

To many – especially in the tech sector – the answer is an undeniable “yes.”

“The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and F*** YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” Elon Musk recently tweeted.

Many others have argued that the policy is vital to American strength by attracting the world’s best talent. Those workers, in turn, bring skills, build their own companies in the US, and grow the American economy.

On the other side are the billionaire – and corporation – skeptics who say the costs outweigh the benefits: Steve Bannon – one of the masterminds of Trump’s America First platform – said the visas are the path to “techno-feudalism on a global scale,” while influential conservative commentator Laura Loomer said the visas are a symptom of an American tech “oligarchy.”

In short, this group sees the visas as suppressing wages and bringing more competition for housing and other scarce resources.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear exactly what Trump thinks.

In 2016, he called the H-1B program “very, very bad” for American workers. This December, he called it a “great program”: “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B,” he said in a recent interview.

At one point, Trump may make up his mind. Until then, the fates of 600,000 H-1B visa holders - and the workers they compete with and companies they work for – remain unknown.

Editor’s Note

We hope you enjoyed today’s email. A TON of feedback to yesterday’s edition on the DCA collision. Among those who wrote in was an American Airlines pilot who spent years flying out of DCA. Here’s what he said:

If you missed the article, read it here. Also, here are our reports from the border, on the battle for the FBI, and about Trump’s “Flood the Zone” strategy.

Enjoy your Sundays and thank you for reading.

–Max and Max

RocaNews co-founders