Tens of thousands of people have been laid off from Amazon, Meta, Salesforce and other once voracious tech employers in recent months. But one group of workers has been particularly deficient: U.S. immigrants with H-1B visas for workers with specialist skills.
Those in-demand visas are granted to employer-sponsored immigrants to come to the US, and the limited supply is heavily used by major tech companies. But if an employee is fired, he must secure sponsorship from another company or leave the country within 60 days.
That’s a particularly difficult situation when the larger companies that sponsor most technology-related visas are also the ones making layoffs and freezing hiring. Amazon and Meta, which have collectively announced at least 29,000 layoffs in recent months, have each applied to sponsor more than 1,000 new H-1B visas in fiscal year 2022, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services figures.
US dominance in science and technology has long depended on a steady stream of talented people from abroad. But the H-1B system — and U.S. immigration as a whole — hasn’t evolved much since the last major immigration bill in 1986. Now, pandemic-era economic uncertainty is reshaping tech giants and casting a new spotlight on restrictions of the system. It shows that workers, companies and perhaps the US as a whole are bearing the brunt.
“Because our system is so backlogged, these visa holders have built lives here for years, they have homes and children, and personal and professional networks that stretch for years,” said Linda Moore, president and CEO of TechNet, an industry lobby group to which almost all major technology companies belong. “They’re just stuck in this system that doesn’t give them clarity or certainty.”
Over the past decade, technology companies, which are typically fierce competitors, have been unusually caught up on the issue of H-1B immigration. They are applying for many visas, want the annual supply of 85,000 to be increased and have lobbied for changes to the application process that would make it easier for highly skilled workers to stay in the US for good. An H-1B visa holder can generally only stay for six years unless their employer sponsors them to become a U.S. permanent resident or green card holder.
That was the path taken by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who is rarely outspoken about political issues been vocal about his personal support for immigration reform. He has argued that both his personal success and the success of his business depended on the highly skilled immigration system.
Tech workers outside the US also seem to love H-1Bs, despite the system’s limitations. The visas offer aspiring programmers a way to get closer to the epicenter of the global tech industry, or to leverage their skills for a fresh start in the US.
Nearly 70 percent of visas went to “computer-related” jobs in fiscal year 2021, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and many of these workers eventually converted their visas into US permanent residents. But because of restrictions on the number of work-based residency applications granted each year, it can take decades for immigrants from larger countries like India to receive a green card, leaving many people tied to a single employer on an H-1B for years. During that time, they are vulnerable to life-disrupting shocks, such as those faced by some immigrants who have been overtaken by the recent tech layoffs.
