Trump’s “Hire American First” Rhetoric Drives Away High-Skilled International Workers

Despite no immediate changes to work visa programs, President Trump’s “Hire American First” rhetoric appears to be driving high-skilled international workers away from the United States.

Last week, Axios reported that numerous start-ups in the city of Toronto in Canada, an upcoming technological hub, are witnessing double-digit increases in job applications from foreigners in the United States, providing one of the first concrete evidence that the President’s tough line on immigration may be causing a reverse brain drain.

The evidence is consistent with the announcement by the U.S. citizenship and Immigration Services in April, that reported a decline in H-1B applications — the most common visa for high-skilled foreign workers — for the first time in 5 years. The decline followed an executive order issued earlier that month, which called for the Departments of Labor, Justice, Homeland Security and State to recommend changes to the H-1B process.

The H-1B program issues 65,000 work visas per year to foreigners employed in the US, as well as 20,000 more visas to foreigners with advanced US degrees and an unlimited number for internationals employed by universities, teaching hospitals and nonprofit organizations. In filing a petition for the visa on behalf of the employee, companies have to demonstrate that the hiring will not negatively impact any US citizen workers. Visas are then granted to successful applicants through a randomized lottery.

Even before the Trump administration, the H-1B visa program was not without its critics. In many cases, companies from India’s $150-billion IT outsourcing industry flood the system with applications, guaranteeing a disproportionate number of visas for their workers. According to the Pew Research Center, more than half of all H-1B visas issued in the past 15 years have been awarded to Indian nationals.

In addition to that, due to the arbitrary nature of the lottery system, the process has come under fire for not prioritizing meritocracy, with the Department of Labor reporting that 40 percent of the visas go to entry level workers. “Right now, the visas are awarded in a totally random lottery, and that’s wrong,” said President Trump, while signing the Executive Order in Kenosha, Wisconsin this past April.

But even though the administration’s intention is to weed out systemic abuse and maintain the top brains within the country, its rhetoric appears to be backfiring, especially hurting the Tech industry that heavily relies on high-skilled international labor to maintain its pace in innovation. There are almost 10 times more US computing jobs open right now than there are students who graduated with computer science degrees — and skilled foreigners are required to fill in the void. Recent statements by Canadian tech entrepreneurs show that they are progressively discouraged to remain in the US.

“I’ve never seen candidates from the U.S. apply for Canadian positions from places like Silicon Valley” Roy Pereira, the CEO of Zoom.ai, told Axios, referring to the rising number of qualified labor leaving the United States. “That’s never happened” A number of countries, including France, China and Singapore are also reaching out to disillusioned foreigners seeking to practice their tech talent elsewhere. Gregory Levey, CEO of Figure 1, a knowledge-sharing medical app, reported meeting a number of entrepreneurs this past week who are looking to leave Silicon Valley and relocate abroad, describing them as “global-level talent”.

The exodus, however, does not appear to be entirely voluntary, as companies are also increasingly reluctant to pursue an H-1B petition due to uncertainty. Many international graduates from US colleges are reporting being abruptly cut off from companies’ application processes solely on the grounds of H-1B sponsorship.

The reluctance to hire them is not unexpected. A draft bill which leaked in January proposed a doubling of the minimum salary requirement for H-1B visa holders to $130,000 — more than the average Stanford Business School graduate salary.