Driving force behind $129,000 visa fee: Lost US tech jobs

Rising concerns that tech industry is replacing local workers with foreign labour

- Noam Scheiber

Before last autumn's presidential election, Mr Kevin Lynn had spent seven mostly fruitless years trying to stop US companies from relying heavily on foreign workers to do white-collar jobs.

The advocacy group Mr Lynn leads, now called the Institute for Sound Public Policy, occasionally made a splash.

An advertising campaign in San Francisco's public transit stations and trains ginned up some media attention, much of it disapproving, and he goaded President Donald Trump into stopping the Tennessee Valley Authority from outsourcing about 200 technology jobs. But mostly it was crickets.

Even a first-term push by Mr Trump did not have much impact.

Then, suddenly, the issue burst into public view, culminating in Mr Trump's decision in September to charge employers a US$100,000 (S$129,000) fee for each H-1B visa used to hire a skilled worker from abroad.

"Our voices are being heard," Mr Lynn said in an interview. "Some are really resonating now," he said.

So what explains the sudden resonance? Part of it is the fierce advocacy of some of Mr Trump's loyal supporters, like right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who helped elevate the issue after the election. Ms Loomer shouted out Mr Lynn's group, whose rhetoric also skews "America First".

Perhaps more important is the job market. Although college-educated foreign nationals are a small portion of the overall labour force, they make up a substantial proportion of workers in computer related fields, about one in five of the roughly 2.3 million software developers in the US, according to census data.

For a long time, these foreign workers did not appear to be a major drag on the employment prospects of American workers. But as tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of people since 2022 and the unemployment rate in computer fields has shot up, especially for recent graduates, the issue has moved to the foreground.