As H-1B Debate Heats Up, AI Boom Hinges on Skilled Immigrant Workforce

The appointment of Sriram Krishnan, a renowned Indian-American venture capitalist, as the Senior Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence at the White House has sparked a debate on eliminating the country’s cap on H-1B visas. 

The move could potentially expand opportunities for skilled workers from India, particularly in the technology sector. 

While popular figures like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and President-elect Donald Trump are in favour of H-1B visas, a section of right-wing supporters were left disappointed, leading to a series of hostile and racist comments against Krishnan and Indian immigrants. 

They argue that such a move could take away jobs from Americans and go against Trump’s campaign—Make America Great Again (MAGA). 

In contrast, Elon Musk, who is likely to chair the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, took an extreme position and said he’d go to war to protect H-1B visa holders.

“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,” he said in a post on X. That said, he acknowledged that the program is broken and needs major reform.

To ward off concerns over exploitation by US employers using H-1Bs to undercut salaries, Musk said the problem could be easily fixed by raising the minimum salary and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H-1Bs. He said such a move could make it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically. 

Even Krishnan has been vocal about his preference for skilled immigration. “Anything to remove country caps for green cards [permanent resident card] / unlock skilled immigration would be huge,” he said in a post on X.  

The H-1B visa allows US employers to temporarily hire foreign workers with specialised knowledge. The cap is currently 65,000 per fiscal year, with 20,000 additional visas for those with advanced degrees from US institutions. However, the demand often exceeds this number, resulting in a lottery system for allocation. 

Skilled Immigrants Lead the Tech World

Some of the world’s most valuable companies headquartered in the United States have skilled immigrants leading their innovations and research. 

Musk, who heads Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, was a South African-born immigrant.

Nvidia, the world’s biggest public company, was started by Taiwan-born Jensen Huang. Its competitor AMD, which was once on the brink of bankruptcy, was resurrected by Lisa Su, a Taiwanese-born engineer. 

Again, Databricks, which shook the ecosystem by raising a $10bn Series J funding, is headed by Iranian-American Ali Ghodsi. 

When it comes to the AI ecosystem, Ilya Sutskever, who formerly worked at OpenAI and spearheaded the company’s research, is a Russian-American.  

Perplexity, the AI search engine valued at a whopping $9 billion, was started by Aravind Srinivas only two years ago. Srinivas is currently an Indian citizen. 

One of the most groundbreaking studies in the last decade involved immigrants. Ashish Vaswani and Nikki Parmar, engineers of Indian origin, co-authored the research that invented Transformers, the architecture behind AI models today. 

Last year, research from the National Foundation for American Policy revealed that out of 43 top AI companies listed by Forbes in the United States, 28—meaning 65% of them—had immigrant founders. 

The report also revealed that 70% of full-time graduate students at U.S. universities in ‘selected’ AI-related fields are international students. 

Several studies, statistics, and research suggest that immigration may be good for the United States. 

Earlier this year, through a research study, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the immigration surge will add $1.2 trillion in federal revenues over the 2024–2034 period. The surge is also said to boost the nominal gross domestic product (GDP) by $1.3 trillion (or 3.2 percent) in 2034 and by $8.9 trillion over the 2024–2034 period. 

The American Immigration Council, a nonprofit organisation, believes that the presence of immigrant workers creates more job opportunities for native-born workers. In their recent report, the Council further adds that unemployment rates are relatively low in occupations that employ large numbers of H-1B workers. 

Moreover, the report also revealed a 2019 study that said that ‘higher rates of successful H-1B applications were positively correlated with an increased number of patents filed and patent citations.’

A 2022 study collaboratively written by Harvard, Stanford, and U.C. Berkely revealed that while immigrants make up about 16 percent of inventors in the US, they have contributed to 30% of the country’s total innovation since 1976. 

A popular media outlet was able to obtain data on all H1B lottery registrations, selections, and petitions for FY 2021–25 through the Freedom of Information Act. 

It was revealed that China had the highest acceptance rate among all countries, followed by Taiwan, Iran, Bangladesh, ten other countries, and then India. AMD, TikTok, ByteDance, and Adobe were the leading companies with the highest acceptance rate. 

(Source: X, @deedydas)

Is H1B Key for MAGA?

Back in 2020, Trump expressed concerns about the H-1B visa program harming American citizens. He even suspended new work visas in an effort to deny jobs to immigrants. 

The American conservative think tank Heritage Foundation advocates for reducing the number of H-1B visas. However, it also recommends increasing the minimum wage for H-1B workers to ensure employers do not misuse the system and hire more immigrants for lower wages than native talent. This has remained a prevalent issue. 

“​​Education in most countries that send us H-1B candidates is incredibly limited and highly competitive. The result is only the absolute cream of the crop in those countries gets a chance to apply for an H-1B. We are literally stealing the very best from other countries,” said Ethan Evans, a former VP at Amazon. 

Today, Trump has taken the side of Musk. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he was quoted as saying.

Just before the election, he appeared in a podcast episode and said, “I think you should automatically get a green card as part of your diploma to be able to stay in this country.”

But his supporters aren’t quite happy. Ann Coulter, a political activist, said that while Trump promised to reduce immigration, he has now betrayed the voters.