President Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday to curb abuses of the H-1B visa program for high-skilled guest workers. He shouldn’t stop there.
He should now work with Congress to overhaul the program fundamentally, turning it from a lottery routinely used to avoid hiring Americans into a system that really will welcome and attract the best and brightest people from abroad. This is something Congress can do, as bipartisan support for the concept already exists.
The H-1B visa system is broken. Currently, 85,000 such visas are issued each year by lottery. Demand outstrips supply by a factor of three. But visas are often used less to attract top talent than to attract workers who will demand less money and are legally tied to their employer once they arrive in the U.S., thus giving them less leverage and mobility than American workers would have.
As evidence of this, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that the number of H-1B applications has fallen by more than 10 percent this year after years on the rise, apparently because the new administration is committed to tougher enforcement of rules and stronger vetting of foreign travelers.
The sharp and sudden drop, in the absence of any decline in demand for high-skilled labor, implies what many have long believed, that the program is abused by many employers in a way that takes jobs for which there are abundant qualified American candidates.
That’s not supposed to be the function of H-1B. Rather, it is supposed to be a way to bring in extraordinary talent from abroad for highly specialized tasks in which few Americans have the required training or experience.
There’s a simple, bipartisan reform that would restore the program to this function from Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who represents Silicon Valley. She proposed a fix in January that would move the program in a constructive direction.
The key would be to give the visas to workers who are paid more, rather than awarding them at random. Some Republicans, including California Rep. Darrell Issa, back legislation that would have a similar effect. Issa’s bill would raise the salary threshold for most H-1B workers from $60,000 to $100,000 per year. This would prevent the program from shifting middle-income jobs away from Americans who have some job skills but lack specialized training.
An even better idea might be to award H-1B visas based strictly based on the salaries that applicants will earn, with the highest-paid accepted first. Assuming that employee salaries reflect value and skill, this is the key to bringing in foreign candidates for jobs requiring the rarest and most prized skills.
If the H1-B program brings in more specialized professionals, such as doctors, scientists, specialized researchers, and skilled programmers, and fewer mid-level employees, then it will be fulfilling its mission. It will also no longer be a realistic avenue for companies that abuse the program in order to displace middle-income American workers.
In tandem with a reform like this one, Congress could also dramatically increase the number of these visas, perhaps even dropping the country quotas that now limit how many applicants can come from specific foreign nations.
With a system that truly attracts the best and brightest, America would have little to fear and much to gain from an influx of highly skilled foreign workers. Indeed, it would be a signal that the American system of legal immigration is once again working for the common good, rather than merely the special benefit of the foreign workers in the program or the companies that hire them.
