H-1B visas vital for US California’s tech titans: Report
California: Of all the rich and powerful people cosying up to US President-elect Donald Trump, few have rushed to Mar-a-Lago faster than the crowned heads of big tech, including California’s own chiefs of Google and Meta, local media reported.
“And few have a stronger motive to curry Trump’s favour than Silicon Valley: the fate of the H-1B visa program that permits foreign-born computer scientists, engineers and other highly skilled workers to migrate to the United States hangs in the balance,” noted the report on Tuesday.
Support for retaining H-1B from Elon Musk, the incoming president’s new closest associate, has stirred rage through much of Trump’s MAGA base, which is against immigration in almost any form. But keeping the pipeline open for tech and other skilled workers is seen by many business leaders as critical for the American economy, especially in California, reports Xinhua news agency, quoting the Los Angeles Times.
The state is by far the biggest user of the H-1B. In fiscal 2024, more than 9,600 employers in California sought clearance for at least one H-1B worker, and 78,860 visa applications for new and continuing employment were approved, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
“They include all kinds of skilled work in various industries, including nurses and science teachers. But the top 10 beneficiaries of H-1B visas in California — accounting for almost one-third of all the approvals — were dominated by tech giants, most of them in the Bay Area,” it added.
Earlier, Trump declared that he is a “believer in H-1B” visas, quashing the opposition to the programme for qualified professionals to work in the US that pitted the right-wing fringe against his advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
“It’s a great program,” he told the New York Post in a phone interview on Saturday. He said, “I’ve always liked the visas; I have always been in favour of the visas. That’s why we have them.” “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times,” he told the newspaper that is a part of the Rupert Murdoch-controlled News Corp.
Trump has supported reforming the immigration system to make it merit-based, adopting a points system like Canada’s or Australia’s that gives weight to academic and employable qualifications.